Nikon D750 Review – First Impressions

Nikon D750 Review – First Impressions

Welcome to my D750 Review.. well first impressions. Everyone is talking a lot about this camera. This isn’t going to include lots of samples but it is going to touch on how the D750 compares to a lot of the other options Nikon makes and to what other cameras photographers might have or be looking at so should help determine if this is the camera for you.

Build quality

First impressions are good. It feels like a more robust d600. Thats not to say the d600 isn’t just feels slightly more so. The grip is deeper than the d800 and d600 too which is meant to be better to hold and better for bigger hands. I’ve got small girls hands though so it encourages me to bring my grip further round meaning my finger doesn’t rest on the shutter button like the other cameras. Maybe I’ll get used to it though. I’ll update the review to let you know if that changes though.

In every other aspect the d750 feels and looks great, complete with extra grippy-ness around the grip of course.

D750 AF

The much touted multicam 3500 FX II adds extra low light AutoFocus powers down to a reported -3EV and 51 pt AF. I will say that right off the bat it isn’t as wide a coverage as the d4, d800. I’d put it in between the d600 and the d800 AF spread, but. with the speed of the d800 / d4 system (general feeling of speed at this stage).
Update – there’s a graphic showing the difference between d600 and d750 AF, it is confirmed it’s smaller.. much more d600 like than d800 like. Though FX cameras are poor for AF coverage if you’re coming from DX (don’t even start with mirrorless and it’s focus anywhere ability) 🙂

Image Quality

Though there is the adobe beta DNG converter that lets you view and edit NEFs from the d750, or the hack for the NEFs to let you open them in photoshop in lightroom, so I’d say at this stage the RAW image quality using adobe products is still up for discussion. They do look great though. This may well be the pinnacle of nikon dSLR image quality, though it’s a small push from the d600, d610, d800, df, d810, d4 and d4s.. certainly nothing like the d3->d3s jump was.. but then that’s not a big surprise the image quality is already totally amazing.

D750 Operational Use

There’s a few nice little changes in the d750.. the af change button is contoured to make it easier to find, the live view implementation is more responsive than on the older nikons making it easier to use more quickly. Great news is that it uses the same batteries as the d600, d610, d800, d810, d7100. So you can re-use your batteries – happy days! The flip out screen is handy, more so for video than stills of course. The screen also seems a bit brighter too. Menus are moved around again. Though largely for the better it seems, with movie mode getting its own menu. You can also remap the shutter button to start recording of movies.. handy if you want to remotely start them via a cable release. Previously this was only on d800/d810 models.

D750 USB connectivity

It seems nikon got fed up of standard mini USB2 and USB3 connections so have decided to use some odd proprietary USB connection (same as on the d7100 too strangely). So be aware of this if you want to shoot tethered you will need extension cables rather than a long standard cable.

d750 Movie Mode

This is of great interest to me as I will be using this for video. There are lot more video settings. These are in it’s own dedicated menu. One great advance with this camera is that you can set different picture controls and auto iso/iso ranges (in manual video shooting mode only) to your photography iso and picture controls. This allows more control so is great if you’re flicking between them. Though it could potential be confusing if you’re flicking between modes. Still it’s a good step forward to let you have different settings between the 2 modes. More on this soon.

Wifi – no gps

The D750 has built in wifi.. but it’s a bit crippled compared to a lot of other versions out there. It’s basically the same as the other dongles you can buy for the d610/d600, d7100 and ones build into d5300. So you can download images.. you can take pictures. but you can’t change any settings at all on the camera.. so don’t leave it in the wrong mode 🙂 In comparison the d4 connected via ethernet and a web browser gives me full control. Though the WT4 and WT5 you can use with the d4/d4s, d800, d810 and now the d750 lets you have full control. You can also use the UT-1 if you like that lets you add ethernet too (and you can add wt5 to get wirless) for networking. Though i’ll be writing about how you can get a much cheaper wireless solution for ethernet enabled cameras. So good news you can download images and use it as a fancy shutter release. But don’t be expecting anything more with the wireless. No GPS is inside.. though this isn’t essential it would be nice to auto-tag your photos, and more importantly you can normally use this to auto-set the clock in the camera.. so no more time drift.. sometimes it’s little things like that which are useful.

D750 High ISO Sample

Here’s a shot taken in a very dark room at night with only a laptop screen on. I shot this at 1/125 at f/1.8 at ISO 51,200 (HI2) and then pushed the JPG 2 stops in Lightroom. It doesn’t look pretty but it’s amazing for the amount of light there. Note this is what a D4 will shoot up to without having to push in lightroom.. with a D4S able to go even higher to ISO 409600!

D750 Review – Conclusions

So far seems like a nice little camera. I can see Nikon selling lots of these things. It’s a nice little bump over the d600/d610 (assuming no bugs, oil splats, issues arise with anything anytime soon). It’s significantly cheaper than the d810 so if you don’t need the 36mpx then you can now save some money with this camera. You do give up some AF coverage spread v the d810 and D4s cameras though so i’d recommend looking through this to see if it’s an issue for you.

You can buy your D750 from Amazon here.

Nikon D750 Camera images