Nikon D90 is now listed in the discontinued section of Nikon Japan website:

Nikon D90 was announced back in August 2008 and it was the first DSLR camera with video recording capabilities. The D90 is still the most popular camera on flickr and is still available for sale at all major online retailers. The D90 was replaced by the Nikon D7000 last year. This product line is on a 2 year replacement cycle and you can expect the next update to come in August of 2012, just on time for Photokina 2012.

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"The Distortion Control Data firmware upgrade is available for Nikon D90 and D5000 cameras only. This is used to correct barrel and pincushion distortion during shooting and editing. This may be loaded into cameras that support distortion control."

Detailed instructions on how to upgrade your camera can be found here.

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Nikon D3100 sensor

In addition to the Nikon D7000 sensor which is made by Sony, here is some more information from Chipworks on the different sensors in Nikon DSLR bodies:

• Nikon D3/D700 sensor NC81338L: made by Nikon
• Nikon D3s sensor NC81361A: made by Nikon
• Nikon D3100 sensor NC81362A: made by Nikon
• Nikon D90 sensor IMX038: made by Sony

Update: another interesting article on Chipworks:

"Nikon have announced that they designed the sensor. Nikon has no wafer fabrication capability so they outsource the sensor production, but they are keeping the foundry close to their chests, so close that we must speculate to identify the source. The obvious choice would be Sony, who build the sensor used in the Nikon D2X, however there are no Sony markings on the device, and the device structure is markedly different from the other Sony CIS we have analyzed. We considered Matsushita/Panasonic the device structure has similarities to the Panasonic CIS we have seen, but it is sufficiently different that we have doubts that it is theirs. Thus we are speculating who else could be the manufacturing source. I believe Nikon would stick with a Japanese foundry. An interesting possibility is Renesas, they have close ties with Nikon, supplying several imager processor chipsets, they have a patent portfolio in image sensors indicating they have active r+d in this field, and they have the fab capabilities."

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• It is interesting that the Nikon D7000 is considered to be a model between the D90 and the D300s. Almost all previous specs indicated a body superior to the D300s. Maybe we are missing something.

• FYI: A week ago Nimesh Thakkar of Nikon India mentioned in a Q&A session that there are no plans to replace the D90 and the D700:

"Q13:- Is there going to be a D700x or D700s? If yes, then when could we expect it? – Dr. Parth
Ans:- Dear Dr. Parth,
At present, there are no plans to replace Nikon D700.

Q14:-When D90 replacement is going to be launched? I’m planning to buy a D90. Is it the correct time to buy it or should I wait? Is there any chance of D90 price drop in another 1 month? – Deb
Ans:- Dear Deb,
At present, there are no plans to introduce any replacement camera and no price drop can be committed.
My suggestion is that technologies keep changing; you have to decide when to buy. I suggest, do not wait, Nikon D90 is a hot cake, go grab it."

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The WG-AS3 hotshoe water protector for the Nikon D700 is listed as discontinued in two different stores in the UK (one of them a major chain).

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• Amazon lists the Nikon D90 as "Usually ships within 1 to 2 months":

The D90 kit is still available.

• Nikon UK is out of printed brochures for the Nikon D90 and D700:

• I got multiple reports that dealers (mainly outside US) cannot order any D90 cameras from Nikon (and in some cases, D700). Nikon D90 must be running really low on stock right now.

• Target and BestBuy also don't have the D90 for sale online (they used to).

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Maybe testing a new product template? Just a reminder that two years ago, the Nikon D90 leaked on Circuit City and Target websites few days before the official release.

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• 16MP DX sensor
• same noise performance like the D700!
• full HD
• 8p/s
• new video AF and performance
• parts of the body will be aluminium

Stay tuned for more.

[NR] rating: 90%

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"I work in *** and it seems that the Nikon D90 is extremely hard to get hold of in the 18-105 kit. The only kit we can get in is the 18-55 kit."

"D90 out of stock
Got a 100% confidence that Nikon distributor here in Italy, Nital, is in "rottura di stock" (stock breaking) for the D90.
My source also added that it will become available briefly again in the middle of the next week."

"Just wanted to share what has been going on in Slovenia for the last few weeks.
When Nikon D90 came out, it was all over the place. 2 years of silence, now it's back again, extra cheaper. Also, a very big electronics site at us doesn't have them anymore and usually when something like this happens at us (50D was also advertised), a new model gets out soon."

"Our store owner is on the buyers group for a large chain in ***.  He has said the D90 is about to be replaced.  Also the D5000 and D3000 are going to be replaced with a camera that would be between them."

"Nikon D90 Removed from Sams Club
The Nikon D90 lens and camera kit has been removed from Sams Club's website. A store employee told me today that a refresh is coming soon."

Now, about the D700 replacement: I do not have any credible information that the Nikon D700 will be replaced in the next two months. This doesn't mean that it won't happen, I simply don't know yet. Here are some related tips I got in the past few days:

"I was chit chatting with a friend who work in a camera store last Friday, and he told me that the Nikon sales person has told him that there will be no D700 replacement this year but a D90 replacement  and expect to be announce soon."

"I just wanted to buy a Nikon D700 but on most big web shops it's out of stock. Also the combination kits aren't going to be restocked. Only the body has a 'in delivery at supplier' status."

The Australian retailer ECS has a note on their front page that Nikon Australia has assured them that there will be no D700 replacement in 2010. Quoting the local Nikon headquarter on their main page should give some credibility to this statement:

European Nikon reps have been repeating the same story for months now (see here and here). If Nikon introduces a D700 replacement in addition to the Nikon D3100 and the new Nikon D90, then we will have three new DSLR in short period of time. Not to mention the upcoming new lenses, Coolpix cameras and EVIL system. Not impossible, but questionable.

More rebates in Sweden: buy a D700 and get a free SB-900.

Unless I post a [NR] rating above 90% for a given rumor, everything else should be considered only as informational posts.

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The Nikon D90 kit (with 18-105mm lens) is listed as "Limit 1 per customer".

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Here are just two of the reports I got in the past 24hr:

"I work for a big retailer in ***. Today all stores have been told to remove demo Nikon D90 bodies from display and send them back to head office."

"I have had a Nikon SB-600 in order for about 3 months now at a big electronic store in ***. I know a guy that works there. He made a call to the head office, and they told him they expect Nikon to announce a replacement at Photokina."

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Alex Fry and Jamie Nimmo will have a 3D photography exhibition "Stereo Portrait Project" in Sydney Australia on 27th May (scroll down for the full press release).

Here is the technical background:

For the Stereo Portrait Project, we used off the shelf hardware and software, from the cameras, lighting, triggering, post production to the printing of the book. We shot using Nikon d90's with shutter cables connected to an RF trigger. The Lighting system was three Nikon sb900's, one connected via pc sync in a soft box, the other two optically slaved.

A custom camera rig was needed to put the cameras as close together as possible, roughly emulating the distance between the human eyes. There was no quick or cheap solution to do this, so we built a number of prototypes out of wood and brackets. Since we were taking portraits, having the cameras mounted vertically base to base made the most sense, giving us a relatively small interoccular and a vertical frame. We ended up making three versions of the rig, the first to test how the base plates attach to the cameras, a hand held version that was unwieldy to hold and the final tripod mounted version you see in the pictures.

To synchronize the cameras we used an RF trigger split out to two preload shutter release cables. We tested how fast we could sync both shutters together with the flashes, and got reliable sync up to 1/160 speed. Giving us the ability to have people move around, talk to us and not inhibit their performance. This was very important since hands in front of the body look fantastic in 3d.

The image pairs were then sorted using Aperture before being exported into Nuke, where final tweaks were made before combining them into the final Anagylphic 3D images.

Aperture made sorting and tagging hundreds of very similar left and right images much more manageable, while Nuke allowed us to simply adapt many of the same 3d workflows we use in our day jobs as stereoscopic visual effects compositors.

We printed a limited edition run of 25 books for the exhibition using the self publishing website Blurb. The process from layout to finished product was smooth and easy. When we got our books back, they looked exactly as expected. This is a great service that we used to compliment the larger prints that will be on display in the gallery and give the people a chance to take home the entire collection for tabletop stereoscopic enjoyment. The book is now available through their online bookstore here.

There is a lot of helpful information regarding 3D photography in the comments section of this post.

Press Release:

Stereo Portrait Project

Thursday 27th of May

Stereo Portrait Project is the brainchild of visual effects artists, Alex Fry and Jamie Nimmo. Born from their shared interest in stereo imagery whilst working on the
upcoming Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, they started a collaborative project aiming to document people in society using 3d portraiture.

Their debut show concentrates on Australian creatives including Children's Author Morris Gleitzman, Archibald Prize winner Craig Ruddy, Writer and Futurist Richard Neville, Musician Rai Thistlethwayte, Director Michael Gracey and more. The exhibition invites the audience to face themselves as someone else using the sculptural aspects of 3d photography, opening up the inner lives of fascinating faces at Sydney’s emerging art breeding ground, Oh Really Gallery in Newtown.

Stereo Portrait Project will be participating at the launch of Creative Sydney, Friday the 4th of June at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney. To add something different on the night, SPP will be setting up a stereo booth to give everyone the chance to see themselves in 3d whilst streaming those images live to twitter.

Stereo Portrait Project is using off the shelf, accessible technologies throughout all aspects of the show. It's supported by Blurb Inc, an award-winning creative publishing platform. The authors have produced a print on-demand book available from the Blurb Bookstore.

Stereo Portrait Project debut Show

Opening 27th May 6pm-9pm, til 8th June. Oh Really Gallery, 55 Enmore Road.

Stereo Booth 4th June. Creative Sydney. (see website for details)

www.stereoportraitproject.com
www.ohreallymagazine.com
www.creativesydney.com.au
au.blurb.com
www.animallogic.com
legendoftheguardians.warnerbros.com

Update: here are some 3D related links taken from the comments section:

• Ocula plug-in: can be used to fix any issues between the images when combining them.
• 3D pictures gallery.
• Various 3D products.
• A company sells this 3D solution with 4 cameras.
• Stereo photography.

Here is the update from one of the photographers:

I'll just answer a few of the points brought up in the comments here.

Yes, the lenses are 35mm AFS 1.8.
Focusing was done by having the subjects stand on a mark, flip to live view, find manual focus for both cameras, switch off live view, engage preload triggers.. Everything was shot at 2.8, this caused issues with both the subject moving off their mark, and asymmetrical focus when something was bumped or nudged accidentally..

As for the oversize inter-occular, it was a byproduct of the construction technique. We have no metal working experience so the rig was bolted together using available materials and skills. Its backyard, but it works.
The impact on the stereo is to exaggerate the depth, but the effects are negligible at the kind of display sizes we are viewing at, life is also made easier by having a blank background.

As for the rig's lack of ability to converge the cameras, we subscribe to the parallel school when it comes to camera setup. In a perfect world we would have purpose designed camera bodies with mechanically shiftable sensors, or be shooting with tilt/shift lenses to offset the sensor.. But we don't have those things, so we shift in post. It means you lose some resolution and field of view, but its fast, easy and avoids all the keystoning and vertical disparities issues inherent in shooting converged.

The Anaglyph conversion was done in Nuke. I implemented the conversion fomulas found here:
http://www.3dtv.at/knowhow/anaglyphcomparison_en.aspx
Specifically the Optimized Anaglyph formula, it dramatically reduces luminance asymmetry by knocking out colours that only appear in one eye or the other. You lose colour range but reduce the visual buzzing. Its responsible for the heavy green cast, but it feels better in 3d relative to traditional anaglyph.
If anyone is interested they can download my Nuke gizmo below:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3656251/OptimizedAnaglyph.gizmo.zip
We dint use Ocular but most likely will in the future. We aren't using it in our day jobs because Guardians is all CG and doesn't suffer from the issues that Ocular is designed to address (mainly repairing problems with mismatches in live action stereo footage).

@Larry N.Bolch
Are you the guy who takes all the great 3d Lambo and Ferrari stuff on Flickr?

As for the W1.
I have one now, its great and lives in my bag everywhere I go. Takes seconds to fire up unlike the 30 minutes of frigging around with the D90s. I love it.
Its worth noting that the W1 is also a parallel camera, doing the convergence as a post process..

@Rob Bannister
Yes, reconstructing 3d point clouds from stereo pairs is an area that interests us.
Its non-trivial but we have tried some stuff with projecting into a deepimage.. Its cool, but we need more hours in the day..

As for Nikon making dedicated stereo cameras in the future?
I think its going to have to evolve out of wherever they go with mirrorless cameras, smaller lenses for the same size sensor will make it easier to position the sensors close together..
See similar ideas with people getting excited about stereo rigs built on RED's small sensor scarlet.

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Skunk 20081231 061106 SW Roadtrip, originally uploaded by Skunkabilly.

Two minutes after I published my previous post I found this online - a much better holiday picture: the result of leaving the camera (Nikon D90) out all night for star trails. After it was completely frozen, the camera recovered on top of a Subaru engine - click here for the recovery shot.

Cheers!

Flickr via Gizmodo

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The latest Nikon D3s rumors (D3+video) triggered me to do this controversial post - I just wanted to give some example on how videographers are using the video feature from the latest Nikon DSLR cameras:

The movie "Gadget" claims to be the first shot with a Nikon DSLR (don't know happened to "Reverie"):

Heineken - Keep the Change Commercial (shot with Nikon D90):

Music video shot with the Nikon D90 (and some RED for the slo-mo):

A videographer shoots news reports with a Nikon D300s:

Chase Jarvis used the Nikon D300s in the his latest SanDisk Extreme Pro campaign:

Few more Nikon D90 movies:

HENKELL HOTEL (Nikon D90 D-movie) from Martin Crespo on Vimeo.

Trifonic/Musicvideo from viktorfokeev.com on Vimeo.

And the last video is from Nikon France (ad for the D300s, shot with the D300s):

I had few readers asked me about the mic on top of the Nikon D300s press-release pictures - it's the Rode Stereo Video On-Camera Microphone:

Update: a web series that is shot entirely on two Nikon D90.

And few more sent in by readers:

NYC Spring Day: Nikon D90 from Mike Kobal on Vimeo.

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Click on link for more Nikon ads:

The second set of ads is clearly a Nikon D90:

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'Reverie' (83 Min.) starring Zach Sanchez (who played in 'World's Greatest Dad' with Robin Williams, written by Bobcat Goldthwait)

Reverie Teaser (First Feature Shot on the Nikon D90) from 'Reverie': The First D90 Feature on Vimeo.

From the email I received:

The filmmakers are currently in talks with Distributor Claudia Mammana (Platoon, Wharlock) for securing a proper distribution company for the film, through associates such as Arnold Kopelson (The Fugitive, Seven), and Antonio Llorens. As well, the producers are currently pursuing the endorsement of Nikon, and are in very early discussions with the company regarding future marketing involving the film & the camera, as a showcase of how the Nikon D90 made the film what it is, and what it means to other independent filmmakers on the horizon.

More info on this movie:

• Official Press Release (pdf)
• Official Web Site
• IMDb Page
• An article regarding the Nikon D90 by the cinematographer of ‘Reverie’ (pdf). Just one quote from the cinematographer Alles Mist on the Nikon D90:

"The information I have gathered from studying the D90 and its competitors have proven to me that the D90 far surpasses the full frame Canon EOS 5D Mark II, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1, and even Red’s Scarlet (based on what information has been released), which sits outside of the Digital SLR camera type and is made specifically for Cinematography."

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Just a small update: the rebate program in Australia will include also the Nikon D90. It should be official on Monday.

NR rating: 85%

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"We are working on an update to these equipments to allow manual selection of shutter speeds and ISO during D-Movie mode and more, we don’t have a specific date but we are working on it. We have had customers with the same concern and we are trying to improve on this firmware update."

Via ProLost

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