Nikon D90 Review: Digital Photography Review

Compared to...

Studio scene comparison (higher sensitivities)

The D90's performance at base ISO may be indistiguishable from its peers (in RAW) but that changes when we try to raise the sensitivity. We have already seen that it produces slightly softer, lower-contrast JPEGS than its peers at base ISO, so it's not surprizing to see this trend continue as sensitivity is raised. Its performance is comparable to that of the 450D, though you'd need to increase the saturation and contrast to really appreciate this (or its improvement over the D80).

The level of detail retained seems comparable with the D300 at ISO 1600 and above (presumably because noise reduction is blurring away any of the super-fine detail that the D300 captures but that eludes the D90). The ISO 3200 is very good as ISO 3200 performances go from APS-C sensors with some detail still visible and noise reduction that's unobtrusive enough to leave a usable image. ISO 6400 is the blotchy nonsense that you might reasonably expect from working with such extreme settings (even in these comparatively bright lighting conditions). For emergencies only.