December 2010, on purpose
I bought my Nikon D90 in December 2010 for a work trip to Brazil that got canceled. Even with the trip gone, the purchase still mattered; I was choosing to carry a dedicated camera instead of relying on whatever was in my pocket.
That month was already packed with Christmas and New Year events, so the camera got plenty of use. Pretty quickly, the story stopped being about the canceled trip; it became about noticing what was already in front of me.
The D90 wasn't the start of my photography journey. Before that, I was already very camera-focused on phones, especially with the Sony Ericsson W800i and the Nokia N82. The D90 felt like a real step up for me: same curiosity, more deliberate choices.
First Real Use
The first real test came just a few days after I bought it: a Christmas party with my high school friends. I didn't have a plan. I just brought the camera and figured things out as I went, asking my friends to be patient while I learned how to use it properly.
They were patient. They let me experiment, miss shots, and figure things out, and I'm glad I brought the camera.
One of the first frames from that night - still learning, still figuring it out.
At the time, those gatherings felt routine, like there would always be another one. Looking back, that phase ended faster than I realized. These photos let me revisit those nights exactly as they were.
Lenses That Mattered
The camera came with the AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR, a solid all-purpose kit lens that worked great in daylight. Its aperture limits showed up fast, though; low light and shallow depth of field were both harder with that lens.
The turning point came when I picked up the AF-S DX NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G as my primary lens. That prime1 changed how I shot. With a fixed 35mm focal length, I had to move my feet and think harder about framing; the f/1.8 aperture2 also gave me far more room in low light, plus the shallow-focus bokeh3 I had been chasing. From that point on, it was my go-to lens on the D90.
What It Taught Me
Using the camera slowed me down in a good way. I stopped rushing, looked around more, and waited for moments instead of forcing them. Funny enough, a viewfinder can make you pay closer attention. It also got me out of the house and into places I might have skipped otherwise.
The D90 in its element - one more reason I kept saying yes to new places.
Built to Last
I used both lenses well into 2014. That says a lot about how dependable this setup was for everyday use.
In total, I took 6,590 photographs with the D90, and 4,585 of them were with the AF-S DX NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G prime.
Throughout my entire ownership, the D90 never gave me a single problem. No faults, no failures, no quirks to work around.
The camera does not deserve all the credit, though. I babied it; it never saw a drop or a rainy day in my hands.
I eventually passed it down to my sister so she could find her own way into photography. That felt like the right way to close my chapter with it.
Below is a selection of photos from my collection captured with the D90.
Footnotes
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A prime lens has a fixed focal length (no zoom), which often encourages more intentional composition. ↩
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Aperture is the size of the lens opening. Lower f-numbers like f/1.8 let in more light and help in low-light scenes. ↩
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Bokeh refers to the quality of out-of-focus background blur, often used to separate a subject from its background. ↩
