I've owned the Nikon D90 for almost a year now. I've read a lot of reviews for this great camera body so I'll not go to that much of detail for this. I will focus more on how good it is a camera in a consumer point of view.
If you're a bit tight on the budget and can't afford the middle ranged D7000 (the D90's successor), I suggest buying the D90 instead. I haven't had experience using the D7000 but I would say that this D90 is well worth the price.
I was a newbie last year when it came to DSLRs. Still a newbie, but has learned a lot of stuff. The only camera I owned back then was a Sony Cybershot, which was good enough for me as it can shoot 7.1 MP and a very decent video for recording my live youtube music. I wanted to upgrade since I felt I had the passion for photography, so I decided to invest on a DSLR, or digital single lens reflex camera. I didn't want the entry level because I wanted something that's not so common since the SLR market price has gotten really affordable and many people had it. I just wanted to own an extra special camera so I researched for something on the prosumer level.
The D90 just had so much going on with its sleek body. I got the kit lens, the 18-105mm which is really great for starting enthusiasts. You can play with a lot of camera settings. When I got it I was so naive that I didn't know how to use it, let alone read the manual, which most of us hate. The approach I did, as usual, was to play with it and shoot tons of pictures -- trigger happy you might say without any regard to shutter life. Most of the time I had it on AUTO and my favorite NO FLASH setting. I didn't even care about the other stuff on the knobs and its other features.
As I got to know the camera more after a few months, I got curious with the settings and theory behind stuff. The technical aspects first before going into composition and other artistic stuff. One great advice that I could provide is to study the relationship between three camera jargon: shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. A good combination of these three will produce a good balance of light and dark areas on your pictures, which is commonly known as "exposure".
Currently I am still trying to learn as much from this amazing camera. It's almost a year now but learning never stops. I would suggest not to get the higher end cameras as your first SLR, but purchase something like the D90 or D7000 and get to know how the DSLR cameras work. When you feel you've leveled up and the camera's abilities limit the beauty of your pictures, that is the time to upgrade (the next upgrade would be FX or full frame sensors cameras).
I currently own three lenses. The kit lens 18-105mm, a 50mm F1.8, and 24-70mm F2.8 all of which are Nikkors (Nikon lenses).
Attached is an unedited picture I shot using this camera with the kit lens 18-105mm.
For the picture below, post processing techniques like HDR was applied to add features on both light and dark areas.
There's just so many things you could do and enjoy with this camera.
