Nikon D5000 Review

The Nikon D5000 is the company’s latest 'upper-entry-level' DSLR aimed at beginners or those wanting a step-up from a basic budget model. Announced in April 2009, it’s the successor to the popular D60 and while externally resembling its predecessor, it inherits many key aspects of the higher-end D90 including its sensor with Live View and HD movie recording. The D5000 also becomes the first Nikon DSLR to feature an articulated screen.

The D5000 swaps the 10.2 Megapixel CCD of its predecessor (and the D40x) for the same 12.3 Megapixel CMOS sensor featured on the Nikon D90. As such the D5000 also offers the same base sensitivity range of 200-3200 ISO with Lo-1 and Hi-1 options extending it to 100 and 6400 ISO respectively. A vibrating low pass filter and Nikon’s Airflow system combat dust.

The imaging pipeline is the same as the D90 too, with the D5000 employing 12-bit analogue-to-digital conversion and an EXPEED processor offering identical Active D-Lighting options and the automatic correction of lateral chromatic aberrations on in-camera JPEGs. The D5000 does add a few new processing tricks beyond the D90 though including Soft Filter, Colour Outline and Perspective Control options in the Retouch section, along with 16:9 and 1:1 trimming options.

Gordon Laing

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