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Nikon D90's 720p movie mode gets critiqued

While being the first DSLR to shoot HD video sounds mighty excellent on paper, it's not worth much if the execution isn't there, right? The general consensus was that Nikon's D90 was a stellar DSLR, but the 720p movie mode was simply a so-so cherry on top. The gurus over at CamcorderInfo decided to take things one step further and actually write up an in-depth review on the movie mode alone. The long and short of it is this: the D90's movie mode simply can't produce the same results as a dedicated HD camcorder, and while it was "often able to produce impressive results (especially in moderately low light)," the unfortunate "wobble effect" really put a damper on things. In essence, the aforementioned problem causes objects to look like Jell-o when the user pans quickly from left to right, and the only real way to avoid it is to utilize a tripod or slow down your pans -- neither of which are terribly convenient. Critics did find quite a bit to praise, and they certainly appreciated the inclusion in an otherwise amazing camera, but it's still far from being ideal in all scenarios.

Nikon's D90: the DSLR for HD junkies?


Here we have it folks: the world's first mid-range DSLR to shoot 720p. A heavenly product for high-def junkies, wouldn't you say? After all, how could anyone who appreciates tightly packed pixels even the slightest not be into shooting 720p clips from their DSLR? Unfortunately, it's probably not that cut and dry. For starters, Nikon engineers decided that Motion-JPEG was the way to go, and as we saw on the PowerShot TX1, that very decision kept it from being absolutely amazing. Even if you've got a memory card capacious enough to handle the format (which chews through free space pretty rapidly), do you really think this camera is an acceptable replacement for your HD camcorder? We're all about gadget consolidation, but we're curious as to who all is really ready to ditch their current setup for this. Any takers?

[Thanks, Stephen]




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