New Nikon cameras and lenses

Thursday, July 30th, 2009 | Photos |

D3000, D300s, and updates to the 18-200mm and 70-200mm/F2.8. Amazon already has them up.

DP Review has a brief D3000 hands on with full specs. Hit the next and prev buttons for other new Nikon gear. Somewhere on DP Review there’s a side-by-side chart comparing the D60, D3000 and D5000, but I can’t find it again.

What I wanted was a camera the size of a D40/D60 with the 12MP high ISO sensor of the D90/D5000. The size is right, and the D3000 has the improved autofocus system of the D5000, along with a larger LCD (but with the same 230,000 pixels).

The big disappointment is that the D3000 has the D60’s 10.7MP sensor. I don’t care about the 1.3 extra megapixels, but what I lusted after was the amazing high ISO performance of the 12MP sensor and this camera doesn’t have it. That pretty much does it for me, but just to pile on, the D3000 lacks the built-in chromatic aberration correction and distortion correction of the D5000 and D90. Also missing from the D5000: LiveView, movie mode, and exposure bracketing.

None of this makes the D3000 a bad camera, but it does make it a half-hearted upgrade from the D40 and a pointless upgrade from the D60. If you’re starting from scratch this looks like a decent camera at a fair price, but be aware the feature set here is getting a bit out of date. (Almost every new DSLR these days has LiveView, for instance.) It definitely ain’t the swingin’ deal the D40 was three years ago. Me, I’ll keep plugging away with the D40 until there’s something clearly better at a price I’m willing to pay.

P.S. It’s still a few days until August 4th, but compare today’s introduction to the (supposedly) leaked Nikon roadmap.

Tags: d40, d5000, d60, d90, nikon

2 Comments to New Nikon cameras and lenses

Laughingdog
July 30, 2009

The side-by-side is right on the D3000 review page you linked.

I definitely agree with you about the D3000. It’s really not that impressive to me. I plan to get my step-father a DSLR for Christmas to replace his very aged P&S camera. Unless the D3000 price drops, I’ll just be getting him a D40.