WELCOME, VIDEO SLR

: Nikon D90 is the world’s first SLR camera which can record video. DAVID POGUE tells us why this is the start of a new era
If you saw it just sitting there, you’d never guess that the new Nikon D90 is a mind-blowing, game-changing camera. It looks like any other big, black intermediate single-lens reflex camera: much more compact than a professional model, but much bigger and heavier than a pocket camera.
What you get in return for looking like a tourist, of course, is the potential for absolutely stunning photos. Thanks to factors like high-quality, interchangeable lenses, a huge light sensor and high-speed circuitry that reduces shutter lag to zero, the pictures you get from an SLR generally make pocket cameras’ output look like amateur hour.

The new D90, which arrives in stores next month, happens to be a superb SLR. At $1,000 (or $1,300 with a new 18-105 millimetre, image-stabilised lens), it’s priced neatly between the D300 (Nikon’s bigger, heavier, all-metal professional model, $1,650 online) and the intermediate D80 ($720 online), which will soon be discontinued.
The features sit neatly between those cameras, too. The D90 has a 12.3-megapixel CMOS sensor that measures 1.14 inches diagonally (24 by 16 millimetres), a hair smaller than on professional cameras. At start-up (or on command), the D90 gives that sensor a little shudder to shake off dust that may have entered the camera during a lens change, in that way avoiding shadowy specks in the photos.

This camera is rocket-fast, too. Autofocus is nearly instantaneous, shutter lag (the delay after the button is pressed) is zero, and you can snap 4.5 photos a second for as long as you keep the button pressed.
There are some new features: a clever calendar that lets you hunt down photos by date, right on the camera; an effect that simulates the spherical view of a fish-eye lens; a jack for an external GPS receiver that is coming from Nikon (for geotagging pictures); a function that straightens off-kilter horizons; face-recognition autofocus; and so on.
But none of that is the big news.
The challenge, on an SLR, was figuring out what to do with the mirror inside. Ordinarily, it bounces light from the lens into the eyepiece; it flips out of the way, exposing the sensor, only at the instant a photo is taken. To display a live image on the screen, you’d have to lock that mirror out of the way,...

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