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Nikon D5000 Video

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Nikon D5000
Created: 05/11/2009
Video description: Though it falls short in its design, the Nikon D5000 delivers a nice feature set, speedy performance, and great photo quality for the money.

Nikon D5000 Video Transcript

[ Music ] ^M00:00:03

>> Hi! I'm Lori Grunin, Senior Editor with CNET and this is the Nikon D5000. The replacement for the D80 which lasted for years, the D5000 is quite worthy successor to the D90. It comes in less expensive than that, but above the D60 in Nikon's product line. And it's a pretty good buy for what you get for under a thousand dollars. It has a very, very nice 18 to 55 millimeter lens. The lens is sharp and it focuses very closely. The camera uses a 12 megapixel sensor, the same as the D90. The camera itself is very fast and it produces very nice images. They are bright and saturated, but the colors are very accurate, the metering is good, the exposures are good, high ISO up to ISO 1600 is good and it's even usable beyond that to high, which is ISO 6400. The D5000 add some features to Nikon's digital SLRs for instance. It has a flip down and twist LCD. Now, this is different than what we see from Olympus, which is flip out and twist or from Sony which is tiltable. This camera also introduces video capture to the sub 1000 dollar digital SLRs from Nikon, however, it does 720p at 24 frames per second and I wasn't really impressed with the video quality compared to any of the other options out there. It has a connector for Nikon's optional GPS and it has a built-in wireless flash controller leaving Canon really as the only manufacturer who doesn't have that built-in. I think what I like the least about the D5000 is the design. It has a small low magnification view finder that's not very bright although one nice thing about it is that it can throw up a grid at display that lights up when you're shooting. And while the LCD is nice and that it flips down and twist around, it's kind of low resolution and soft. I couldn't tell if any of my shoots were sharp when I was shooting with it. And frankly in direct sunlight I had trouble reading it at all. Now, in this camera Nikon switched to an interactive display where you change all your settings through the LCD. So, if you can't read the LCD that becomes a problem. The other kind of annoying thing about the interface is, if you shoot in single AF point mode the way I do where I just like to lock it on the center, the multi selector doesn't lock and I frequently found myself accidently changing the focus point. So, my design quibbles about the D5000 left me feeling like the shooting experience wasn't quite as good as I'd like. But for a lot of people the trade off is worth it for the fast shooting and the excellent photo quality. I'm Lori Grunin and this is the Nikon D5000. ^M00:02:48 [ Music ]

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Nikon D5000 (body only) Review

The good: Very good photo quality; fast; video capture; articulated LCD; nice kit lens.

The bad: Small, dim viewfinder; middling video quality; too easy to accidentally change focus points.

The bottom line: Though it falls short in its design, the Nikon D5000 delivers a nice feature set, speedy performance, and great photo quality for the money.

Read full review

Nikon D5000 (body only) Specs

Manufacturer: Nikon Inc.
Part number: 25452

Product Specifications
  • Product Specifications

  • Product Basic Spec

Read full specs