Questions about the D90..

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Outkasted

Member
I am very interested in this d90 Camera. i have a few questions and was curious if you wonderful people could help me answer them.

1 - How many minutes of video could I record per HD on the highest setting ? This is assuming I bought the biggest HD things I could.

2 - How would I transfer my footage from my HDs to my g5 Mac ? My Mac has no HD insert. I know the g5s are getting long in the tooth, but it still works well with 4 gigs ram, 256 mb graphics card, final cut studio 2, etc. I'm not exactly rich, so I'm trying to work with what I have.

3 - Is there anything close to the quality of picture from a camera in the price range ? I was looking at a Canon HV-30, but I am very drawn to the image that the d90 camera produces. I know that Canon has a similiar camera coming out that is suppose to be better, but it's also a lot more expensive and doesn't shoot 24fps. It's over my budget anyway and I'd have to spend more time saving instead of actually creating.

Thanks for any help.
 
hd? you mean sd, right? you get approx an hour on an 8gb card, give or take due to the vbr encoding. you transfer using iphoto or nikon transfer and a usb cable, or with a card reader for better performance and flexibility. the hv30 takes sharper pictures and has better manual controls (i never thought i'd say that about it though) but the results don't look as "filmic" for a bunch of reasons.

/matt
 
I bought a D90 specifically for low light and DOF capabilities. I had been using an HV20 with the hopes of upgrading to a better camera later but since my current project calls for low light, I had to do some tests and decide. Ultimately, the low light and DOF capabilities of the D90 outweigh the superior resolution of the HV20. Also, the resolution of the HV20 was, in my case, a hit or miss as I found that many shots were just one "spin" away from being in truly crystal sharp focus and I couldn't tell because of the awful LCD. I don't own my own lights or external LCD, save for a cheap DVD player for composition purposes, so the D90 with it's superior LCD, low light capabilities, and not to mention the great color reproduction, made it an easy choice.

The only real downside is the workarounds for the camera. Right now, a third of my footage is pretty noisy simply because of the awkward nature of the AE Lock method. I may just need practice as I am still new to the camera, but even though the footage is noisy, it's not offensively so. It looks more like added noise, the image is still there and it's sharp but it's just behind a layer of noise. When I see it scaled down to SD for DVD, the majority of it all but disappears and I'm left with a nice clean-looking images. In that case, it proves that it was all worth it.

Now, would I trade up for a higher resolution model with manual controls? Heck yeah! But we've got to wait and see if Nikon announces a new model this month. You can check the rumor sites about some announcement they're going to have within the next couple of weeks. Maybe a D3x with a 1080p movie mode? Who knows? It's all just rumors at this point. But I can safely say if you need a D90 now, just go ahead, it won't hurt your wallet too badly.
 
the hv got peaking though, which makes it much easier to judge focus even than on the double res d90 lcd.

/matt
 
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