D90 On The Way? (Rumor)

Well, it helps to get your dates correct. As for the free NX upgrade, it applies in 2008, not purchases in 2007. My bad, I misread it. In other words, any dealers who are still dumping the older NX -- and have been since the beginning of May -- can now tell their customers they get a free upgrade to NX2.

They've got that upgrade plan all wrong. Those of us who bought NX back when it was just v1,1 or v1.2 should get a special award from Nikon for having put up with it until they got it working fairly well in v1.3, and downright usefully in v2.0. Ah, but us early adopters are always the sacrificial lambs, aren't we?

As for the D90. Video? Really? We don't need no stinkin' video! But then, some other modestly priced brands/models now have competition from Nikon. People coming from video-capable point-and-shoot cameras for the first time will be able to give the Nikon higher-end consumer bodies a look without having the lack of that ultimately irrelevant feature turn them away. Interesting, kinda.

Video, from a DSLR! If it is done correctly, I bet it would be the highest quality video cam money could buy this side of $10K.

If you don't want video then don't use it, or don't buy it. I for one welcome new features. Live view is great on my D3 for macros.

I'm all for new features... but only if their presence on the device doesn't come at the expense of it doing what it's primarily designed to do. I have no question that it will be a draw for a lot of people, and I'd much rather that Nikon get that business than someone else. I'm sure that if I happened to have it, I'd probably use it here and there. I just have to assume that the plumbing that supports live view is only a step away from dumping that video to the buffer and off to your storage... but probably only at the resolution of your rear display (which ain't too shabby these days!).

If Nikon puts video in a SLR I'm switching to Pentax or Sony!

John, I'm sure you'll be able to sell your current Nikon lenses to a new D90 owner.

I don't know how accurate Thom Hogan's information is, but generally speaking, he wouldn't put such information on his web site unless he is quite sure about its accuracy.

It is always hard to predict the future, but the general trend is that DSLRs will continue to be single-lens but the reflex part may gradually go away. Live view is merely the first step that an LCD image will gradually replace the optical viewfinder for composition. Another trend is that video will gradually replace still photography. Pretty soon not only Nikon but everybody else will have the video option. Of course in the early stage, video is not nearly good enough to replace still images and the LCD image is not as convenient as the image from the penta prism, but give it 5, 10 years, the new technologies will gradually mature. If you go back 9 years, the D1 also looked very primitive in 1999.

My suggestion is to keep an open mind. Photokina is a bit more than one month away. After the Olympics is over, we'll see major announcements from many different brands and that'll give us peak into the future.

Video? Microphone? Crying out loud. Like I really want people to hear what I say when I miss shots. Is the camera going to come in green, yellow, and pink too? Not sure what use I would have for live view, as Nikon does it. Why couldn't they skip the microphone goofiness and give me a tilt screen? This is starting to sound anti-climatic almost. Have to wait and see what the performance of the sensor does. If it at least equals the D300, I'm still in. What I want is a cleaner high ISO and low light performance. Don't need no stinkin' microphones.

Kent in SD