Camera Labs

When it comes to color reproduction, the Nikon D5000 seems to be a tad more stable than the D90. Color depth on the D5000 has also been significantly improved compared to the D90.

Even though the Nikon D5000 features a similar resolution image sensor as the D90; they don't include the same features. The effective sensibility of the D5000 image sensor clearly deviates from that of the D90. Whereas the D90 has a lower effective ISO value over almost the entire ISO range, the Nikon D5000 shows the opposite. ISO 100 has nearly the same sensitivity as the ISO 200 setting (181 and 191 ISO), 400 - 1600 ISO are an average of 23% higher and 3200 and 6400 ISO are the equivalent of the acclaimed specifications.

The good news is that the Nikon D5000 has an improved S/R ratio compared to the D90

The dynamic range of the Nikon D5000 DSLR camera is fine. You could even call it excellent while it is able to optimally reproduce the details in the dark and light areas of a picture up to and including ISO 1600. Also here Nikon has improved the D5000 compared to the D90, which is an excellent achievement.

So in terms of image quality, the D5000 matches the D90’s output