A Short Lived Affair With My D90

I had my D90 for less than a year.  Most of the time I used it to take photos in Bintan where my father works.  My father works in a Resort in which he has quite a large stake.  The Resort is called Bintan Agro Beach Resort (www.agrobeach.com).  Not only was this a great opportunity to hone my photography skills, I was motivated to take good photos for promotional materials.

In the Gallery of the website you'll see some of my photos there which are mainly the landscape photos. For the photos with models, they were taken by another photographer.

The View of The Kelong To The Restaurant

It was an opportunity to learn mastering my D90.  I learned how to use various filters such as polarizing filters, ND filters and graduated ND filters as the place was extremely sunny and the only way to prevent full blown outs are through the use of filters and scouting for angles with proper lighting.

My favourite lens at that time was the Tokina 11-16mm F2.8.  The photo above was taken with that lens.  

In less than a year I realized that I had outgrown my D90 and I wanted to go Full Frame, but that'll be another story in one of my future posts.  Bottom line was, I wanted more colour depth, higher ISO rating, more MP and better dynamic range (yes, I still can't shake off that Fuji DR!).

The Resort's Main Pool

The Beachfront At Low Tide

Sunset in The Resort

When the time came to create a website for the Resort I jumped at the opportunity to take the photos.  I rented a Nikon D300 and used it with my D90 and took the photos which were eventually used in the website.

Raw Unedited Photos - The Ones on The Website Had Been Edited by a Graphics Designer

Another Collage of The Docks at Sunset

Not long after, I sold my D90 to a colleague who had begun showing interest in photography.  As I saved the money I rented a D700 and a 5D Mark II  to determine which one is better suited to my needs.

So what is D90 like?  I won't say that I'm not satisfied with it.  The camera has good ergonomics and easy learning curve.  The photos always come out very pleasing with the right balance of colour depth and dynamic range - although at that time the dynamic range was still below Fujifilm's S Pro 5.  But after using D300 and experiencing a different AF system I realized that AF also plays an important part in getting "That" photo.

The D90 is a good beginner DSLR (although at this time this is already overtaken by D5300 or D3300), and as far as APS-C sensors are concerned, I prefer to stay out from Canon as their APS-C sensor size is smaller resulting in higher crop factor of 1.6 as compared to other brands' 1.5, and of course that results in 'slightly' lower ISO sensitivity.  

In conclusion, I enjoyed my D90 and had good fun with it.  It was rather hard to let it go, but it's in good hands of my good friend now who is still using it.

~ Photos taken with Nikon D90 & D300 + AF-S 18-105mm F/3.5-5.6G ED VR; AF-S 50mm F/1.8G; Tokina AT-X 11-16mm F/2.8 ~