Great camera for a great price

Author's Rating:

Pros: Fairly low price point, records 720p video, large preview screen.

Cons: No auto focus when recording video and live view photo shooting is slow.

The Bottom Line: 
This camera has plenty of the basics that are refreshed with the latest tech. Some say it is as good, if not better, than the D300.

Author's Review
I upgraded from my Nikon D70 to the D90 and let me tell you, I have no regrets. The second I started to play with this camera I fell in love. In addition to purchasing this camera, I also purchased a Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VRII lens, Nikon SB-900 and a Sandisk Extreme III 16GB 30MB/sec SD card.
This review will be kept simple and short in addition to being aimed towards the 'weekend warrior' photographer.
Anyone upgrading from a Nikon D40/50/70, or simlar body, camera will notice a few things. The first would be the size of the body is slightly larger - it is not crazy large like the Nikon D300 or D3, but it is a little larger than what most people may be use to. This leads to the next item, the size of the image preview screen. Nikon greatly increased the size of the size of the image preview screen in addition to increasing the quality of the preview. It is much more accurate with color representation and also easier to see the detail in the pictures you took.
As with any camera, you will need to learn the button layout. Most buttons are in similar spots as previous Nikon cameras, however there are some newer buttons (i.e. zoom) and/or layout changes - it really depends on which camera you compare this too. The camera menu has also been changed and is again slightly different than other Nikon cameras. It is fairly similar to the D300, but drastically different (in a good way) from the D70.
After setting up the camera and installing my lens I took some test shots. I started shooting in RAW + JPEG fine so I could compare results of the NEF images and JPEG images. I only recommend shooting in this mode if you have a large memory card, each photo can take up around 15MB of space between the two files.
The photos came out perfect wether I used no flash, the onboard flash or the SB-900 flash. The camera did a very good job of balancing the exposure/ISO given each lighting situation. The focus tracking mode also works very well, even if it is limited to 11 point focus. The camera would lock on to a certain spot and maintain forcus with that spot as you moved the camera.
One feature that I probably will never use, but is pretty cool, is the photo touch-up capability. If you want to do on-board color correction, or other editing of a photo, the camera has a pretty diverse tool set. On top of that, when you edit a photo, it maintains the original and creates a copy that contains the settings you applied. If nothing else, this lets you 'play' with the camera if you need to kill some time. The dedicated zoom buttons also allow you to quickly zoom in on a picture and verify your shot. Previously with the D70, zooming was a cumbersome process.