Nikon D5000 Digital SLR Camera - Body Only

Product Information

The pop-up flash on the D5000 has several settings including Auto, Fill-in flash, Red-eye Reduction, SlowSync, Red-eye Reduction with Slow Sync, Rear-curtain Sync and Off. As you can see from the table below the D5000 offers many of the features of the D90 and certainly represents a major step up from the D60. But this chunky yet competent backpack doesn't have a killer feature or look that makes it stand out from some pretty tough competition. Its flexible, moving screen allows you to position the camera perfectly to suit the angle or shot you’re trying to take - so whether you’re at a concert and you want to get a clear view above the crowd for your shot or you want to take a picture from ground level, you can adjust the vari-angle monitor to give you the best view of your subject. You have to remember to hit the shutter release twice to get both of your shots -- it doesn't save two files for each shot -- but it's a helpful feature if you're unsure of your lighting.

The D5000 is the smallest, lightest Nikon that has technical image quality indistinguishable from Nikon's best D3 and D700 in good light. Furthermore, there is a new Quiet mode, in which the mirror is raised fairly slowly to further reduce the sound it makes. For example, you can change the lens for a new perspective and enhance the emotional impact of your movies using the Picture Control settings before you even start shooting. If face detection is activated, the Nikon D5000 quickly begins tracking faces, placing a yellow box around each one, up to five at a time.

With practice, performing adjustments via this screen becomes fairly quick and easy, but it's still not as efficient as the D90's dedicated controls. You can view photos in batches of up to 72, and there is also a calendar view that organises images by date and time.

Scene recognition is something that Nikon has been working on for years, and these last few models have seen incremental improvements to the system. The D5000 works with the raw data in-camera and doesn't seem to lose any sharpness or resolution doing these transformations. Fortunately, MF is not the only focusing option in Live View, at least as long as you are taking stills.Even when the D5000 recognizes faces, if they were in shadow and you didn't pop up the flash, they still come out too dark. Some newer models are even capable of 1080p 24 frame/s video, such as the Nikon D3100, Nikon D5100 and the Nikon D7000. Quiet Mode slows down the mirrors and mechanical junk that has to fly around inside the D5000, which makes it much quieter. For the past few weeks, our readers have been voting on their favorite cameras and lenses released last year. As in past models, the Color Matrix Metering system compares what it sees in the image to a database of 30,000 photos to make its metering decisions for each scene.

The general arrangement of the buttons follows that of the Nikon D90, and the Live view button is also in a similar spot; but Nikon maintained the idea of simplicity on the back of this consumer-oriented digital SLR camera, as it lacks the many silkscreened icons and words that clutter the back of other maker's cameras. It's not a big loss, though, because you have to edit out the T1i's focusing efforts, which often include significant changes to the exposure as well as focus when autofocusing; I'd prefer not to have to cut them out later in the editing program. The Canon EOS 500D, the Olympus E-620 and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1 each have their own sets of strengths and weaknesses, therefore we recommend that you check out our reviews of those cameras too, before making a purchase. inch vari-angle LCD monitor makes it easier to compose your shots from difficult angles, while the extensive ISO range of 100-6400 should cope with most lighting conditions. SD cards are also somewhat more robust, less prone to bent contact fingers in the camera or card reader jamming the card connector while also rendering the camera useless.

Packed with features that make taking pictures easy and fun, this camera stands out above the competition with its unique vari-angle LCD monitor, which allows you to shoot easily from any angle you can imagine.

Last year's big SLR news was Live View and Movie mode, and the D5000 adds an articulating screen to the mix, making both modes that much more valuable.

The D90 has significantly better utility than the D40, D40x, D60 and D5000 because the D90 adds many more direct control knobs and buttons to get to its extra features, while the D5000 and D40 share the same lack of buttons and rely more on menus for many settings, like ISO or White Balance. Nikon really only wants you using ISO 200 ~ 3,200, so ISO 100 reads "Lo-1" and ISO 6,400 reads "HI+1. When you can't afford an expensive tilt/shift lens, you can simulate one with the Nikon D5000's Perspective control feature.