Still Life with Video
By Josh Quittner
Recently, Nikon sent me its new breakthrough D90--the first digital, single-lens-reflex camera that also shoots high-definition video. I immediately ran it over to my neighbor Kupcake Bentley, the macho photographer, to get his take.
It's pretty well known that professional photographers are weird, which is why I worship them. They are persnickety about all things yet have pulses that never exceed 60 beats a minute. Who else, on seeing men, women, children and livestock fleeing, would run in the direction of the horror? Kupcake (whose real name is Dean) is typical of the breed. When he was a younger man, he used to ride his bike 80 miles (130 km) to his job, along the freeways of Southern California. Then he'd ride home and work out. I tell you all this to qualify Kupcake as a man who's not easily impressed.
After putting the D90 through its paces for a while, he said, "It blows away the $5,400 camera I got seven years ago." Kupcake shook his head mournfully, which he often does, though he's rarely sad. "It destroys it. It decimates it."
Like most professional photographers, Kupcake has a lens for every occasion. He slipped a shallow-focus 85-mm 1.4 Zeiss onto the Nikon body, and we watched through the 3-in. (8 cm) LCD screen as he shot some dazzling video of a bowl of bananas. One of the remarkable things about the D90 is that you can shoot video through virtually any Nikon-compatible lens--from fish-eyes to telephotos--going all the way back to the 1960s. "You can shoot video from superwide to frickin' long--like paparazzi-style Britney Spears stuff," said Kupcake. Just try doing that on your home video camera. Oh, wait: don't--because you can't.
Of course, this is still version 1.0 of what's bound to be a long line of cameras from Nikon, Canon and others that will also shoot video. The D90 does have its limitations. At HD quality, you can shoot for only about five minutes before the image sensor overheats. (You can step down the quality and get 20 minutes of shooting time.) You'll need at least an 8-GB SD card for video, since five minutes of HD can chew up a full 600 MB of space. Likewise, autofocus doesn't work after you start shooting; that means if you're following a target that moves closer or farther, you'll need to focus manually, which can be a nuisance.
So think of the D90 as a great camera that does a very cool and occasionally useful parlor trick. Perfect for shooting snippets of the kids playing soccer, not so good for shooting the entire school play. But as a still camera, its price ($999.95 without a lens, or $1,299.95 as a kit with a Nikkor 18-mm to 105-mm image-stabilization lens) is hard to beat.
Like most digital cameras in this class, it comes with an automatic PHD (push here, dummy) mode, which takes gorgeous photos--up to four a second. Every aspect of taking a picture can also be isolated and tweaked, satisfying even the pro. Indeed, Kupcake was so blown away, he might buy one himself. "I could shoot professionally with this frickin' camera," he said, looking at me sadly. With digital cameras improving so fast and getting so cheap, so could you.