Along with the release of the Canon 50D, Nikon announced the successor to the D80 the Nikon D90.

I’ve been a fan of Nikons since the release of the D3. Basically until then Canon lead the way with Digital SLR technology.

The D90 introduces a new feature which has rocked the digital slr world and the forums at DPreview the world’s number one digital camera website. Nikon introduced at Photokina 2008 the D90 with live video recording. The first of it’s kind on a Digital SLR.

I never thought it would be any good, i mean, you can’t autofocus, zoom and the ergonomics are wrong. HOWEVER, after some time to digest it, its truly ground breaking.

The video above shows some footage recorded on the camera using fisheye and big aperture lenses. Amazing.

You cannot do anything like this on a digital video camera under $1000. For me who does video work and even now i’m trying to do some shallow depth of field shots in post-production which is very time consuming can be done easily with a D90. You can even get this effect with the cheapest nikon 50mm lens.

So obviously you can’t use the D90 for event work but for creative shots, its revolutionary. Live view has been around for digital slr’s for a while, why haven’t they thought to just record the feed in the past?

Canon has missed the mark this round. I’m sure they could do a firmware update down the track.

UPDATE:
Sample D90 Video – HOT!

Found an article on this wedding video taken from 13,500 feet from the VASST site. I’ve had my fair share of tough weddings from the 200 odd that I’ve filmed. AVICA weddings on the gold coast comes to mind, as it was a little tricky in the chapel as they have a large glass fixture directly behind the alter, making it fun to keep silhouetting to a minimum and not having an overexposed shot just to get the bride and groom illuminated. In hindsight if i had some light bounces I could have set them up to naturally brighten the proceedings.

Anyways, I found this interesting, my work doesn’t really compare to filming at 13,500 feet. I would love to see the final product in HD.