Nikon D610 Review

I broke down and bought a new camera body. I started off with a Nikon D5200 and a 50mm f1.8g. I also had the 18-55mm kit lens, but I didn't use that very often. I got some very nice shots with it, but there were a few things about it that bothered me.

I like to compose my shots in the camera and not do any cropping in an image editor after the fact. The optical viewfinder only covered 97% of the image sensor. There were many times when I thought I had cropped out the unwanted item in the viewfinder only to find it poking in to my composition when I reviewed it later on my computer.

The other thing that I wasn't crazy about was how it felt in my hands. The D5200 is a small camera. I liked the light weight, but it always felt too small. My right pinky finger was always left hanging out in limbo when I wanted it to be grasping my camera.

I also wasn't a fan of the fact that the crop sensor lenses weren't as well regarded as the full frame lenses for Nikon. The full frame lenses will work perfectly fine on the D5200, but you lose some of your field of view. A 50mm prime looks like a 75mm lens. You can of course switch to a shorter focal length lens to compensate, but that isn't always the cheapest route. The least expensive 35mm full frame lens from Nikon is around $600. I have nothing against the 35mm field of view, but I want to shoot 50mm for awhile and see where that takes me. 35mm might be a tad wide for most of what I shoot, but not wide enough to be a true wide angle lens.

Now that I told you my reasons for leaving the D5200 behind, I'll tell you how I feel about the D610. My initial impressions are it's nice. I like the view finder. It covers %100 of the sensor so there usually aren't any surprises after the fact. I like the way it feels in my hands. I can use my pinky to help grip the camera. I also like the fact that I don't have to constantly do math to figure out the field of view I am actually getting with the crop sensor. The preview screen is nice and bright and most of the controls I learned from the D5200 are pretty much identical on the D610. I still forget that I have a second command dial for the aperture and end up hitting the exposure compensation button and jogging the back dial like I had to do on the D5200 to adjust the aperture. Not a huge deal, I just need to practice and get some new muscle memory.

I've shot over 1200 pictures and haven't had any issues with dust or oil spots. If you are not aware, the D600 had some issues with dust and oil getting on the image sensor after a few hundred shots. I am happy to report this camera has had no issues.

At the moment, I'm still shooting with my 50mm prime. I intend to get a 28mm prime and 105mm macro at some point in the future, but I need to save my pennies. In the meantime, I intend to work on my compositional skills and try to take as many interesting shots as I can. I don't feel like the quality of my body or lens is holding me back.