Holiday rebates are back :-)

Too bad I blew my budget for the year already on the 70-200 f/4 + a m43 kit.

I would have bought the D750 + 24-120 for $2k.

In the last couple of years, Nikon USA no longer has the February/March fiscal-year-end lens-only rebates, but they have rebates for Mother's Day, graduates, and Father's Day around May, June.

 

In this round they have the D750, D810, and D500, either "body only" or with a kit lens. For the FX D750 and D810, the kit lens is the 24-120mm/f4 AF-S VR. For the D500, it is the 16-80mm/f2.8-4 AF-S VR. In all cases Nikon throws in a matching vertical grip (so that it isn't really body only). They are mostly clearing older stock. Pretty much as expected, the newer D850 is not part of this rebate. In fact, there is still a bit of waiting to buy a new D850 in the US, although the wait is down to a week or two now.

 

This is the link to B&H:

Nikon Rebates

 

But that same deal is available at Adorama, Amazon, and other authorized Nikon USA dealers.

Edited May 6, 2018 by ShunCheung

D710!?

 

When did they sneak that one out?

 

A D700 with 16Mp sensor and no AA filter maybe?

D710!?

 

When did they sneak that one out?

 

A D700 with 16Mp sensor and no AA filter maybe?

Typo, I meant D810.

Yes this is a good time to buy. Nikon dropped the price of the D7200 as well.

Well, it might depend what you're buying. It's a Photokina year, and the D5 and D500 are approaching their update cycle; the D750 is arguably overdue, let alone the D610. I'd be surprised if some update to the D750 market position didn't appear in the next six months - though it might be mirrorless.

 

Of course, Nikon have surprised me before (Df, 58mm) - and I generally have an awful track record of prediction. I expected a 16MP 5DII and didn't believe the 36MP D800 until it turned up. So don't believe anything I say. :-)

It's a good time to buy the D750 or the D7200. I think price on the D500 will be lower still at some point in the future. Nikon just won't drop the price of the D5 regardless.

I think the D750 kit for $2000 would be a great beginner kit.

I think the D750 kit for $2000 would be a great beginner kit.

Or a dam' near any Nikon photographer kit! Very capable.

Or a dam' near any Nikon photographer kit! Very capable.

 

Did you buy a D7200 after the holiday sales this year?

Did you buy a D7200 after the holiday sales this year?

Yup, used and a smart move. A significant addition due to the extra reach with FX lenses, plus the fact it is virtually identical to the D 750 in terms of operation. It would make a great deal of sense to travel with the 750 & 7200 same battery as well. The story, of course is the attractiveness of the DF to me - 6X as many shots with it on the Bermuda trip as with the D 750.

Sandy off topic, but may I ask why the DF preference? Do you just like that style of interface or do you have a technical benefit to your body choice?

Do you just like that style of interface or do you have a technical benefit to your body choice?

Andrew, I suppose part is habituation - and because it is so very familiar, is most like the film Nikons I use / used for so many decades, also it is my oldest "sophisticated" DSLR. I have been using it since June of 2014, don't have to think about how it works and it has always delivered fine results. It feels good in my hands, and I trust it. Both the D 750 and D 7200 are excellent - I wouldn't have them if they weren't. They both have valuable features the DF lacks, not to mention the extra MP. Probably a bit like the fact that under most circumstances I prefer a pistol designed more than 100 years ago. Go figure.

"Typo, I meant D810."

 

- I guessed that Shun.;)

 

It did have me googling D710 for a while though. Just to make sure I hadn't slept through a Nikon camera release.

Thanks, Sandy. Just curious why people use which camera and why!

Thanks, Sandy. Just curious why people use which camera and why!

 

I have multiple systems, each with a purpose.

 

I shoot the D7200, cuz it could work the older screwdriver AF lenses.

Today I would go with the D7500 because of the pivoting screen, which would allow me to do low angle shots without laying in the dirt.

The DX 18-140 lens is much more useful that I had though when I bought it :D

 

I am now looking at the D750 as a FF big brother for my DX D7200. Not to replace the D7200, but to be an alternate camera to it.

The reason is, I am frustrated with the lack of DX equivalent lenses to some of the FX lenses. Specifically the 70-200 f/2.8. The DX 55-200 is a slow variable aperture consumer grade lens, and just does not cut it in low light. Putting the 70-200 on a DX body is like shooting with a 105-300 FX lens. At 105, the short end is too long. There is a reason Nikon dropped the low end from 80-200 down to 70-200 . . . wider coverage. Sigma's now discontinued 50-150 f/2.8 was the only equivalent DX lens. So it is the old story, the lens (70-200 f/2.8) chooses the camera (FX body). Although in this case it is a 70-200 f/4, to manage the weight.

 

I would love the D810/850, for the additional quality and resolution. But they are significantly heavier than my D7200, and managing gear weight is a major consideration for me . . . senior citizen with a bad back. Although if I treat it as a digital replacement of my LF camera it could work, as I don't carry the LF gear more than 100 feet from my car. ;)

 

I just got into the Olympus micro 4/3 system for the reason above. I need to cut gear weight, to ease the load on my back.

It is my secondary camera to my D7200. I use it when I don't want to/cannot carry the weight of the D7200.

I had looked at the D3400 + 18-55 as a light weight alternate to my D7200 + 18-140.

 

And finally the P&S when I want/need a compact camera for ease of carry/travel.

 

Each camera system has a specific purpose that the others don't fill.

A jack of all trades, is a master of none.

So is it with cameras.

Gary: Me too, although I haven't ended up with a DX body yet. I'd thought of getting one as a backup to my D850, but the trade-in offer I got on the D810 was poor enough that I would have had to pay that much for a couple of trips to hire a better backup body. I've actually been out shooting bluebells with two cameras (with different lenses) round my neck, in the style of wedding shooters. So far the main problems are stopping them smacking into each other and avoiding throttling myself with two camera straps...

 

Anyway, my "lighter" system is usually an RX100, although I'm keeping an eye on Nikon's mirrorless choices. I do have a micro 4/3 body and a couple of lenses, but they're elderly and barely used. I've been known to carry film systems for lightness (and when I worry about trashing them). Usually I just go with lighter lens options. I've been tempted by something a little bigger than the RX100, but the Coolpix A is big and expensive for what it can do, the same is even more true for Fuji bodies, and everything compact with a zoom seems to have standardised on a 1" sensor. Although I could do a little better with a newer RX100 variant. The lens on the original sucks a bit, but DxO does pretty well with it. You can't get much bigger without reaching the "doesn't fit in the pocket of my jeans" threshold, and even then a phone still has an advantage!

 

With the possible exception of wide angles (which still need to stay moderately telecentric for sensors to work), full frame bodies aren't going to make lenses any smaller. The Sigma 50-150 f/2.8 was smaller because it was, in full frame terms, roughly a 75-225 f/4: if you adjust the aperture to get similar depth of field and light capturing to the 70-200 f/2.8 you get the 50-100 f/1.8 which is almost as heavy as the 70-200 (and even then it's short of the 200mm end). Given that the 24-120 f/4 is actually relatively big, I wish Nikon would update the variable aperture one to be, you know, not awful. But there's always the 24-85. Smaller sensors mean shorter lenses, but (to an approximation) only make lighter lenses if you don't try to keep the aperture equivalent, and some slower (but still decent) FX lenses would have the same effect. That said, the new 70-300 f/5.6 is supposed to be good, so Nikon may be listening.

 

The body itself being smaller as a backup is tempting. I'd quite like to see a fully cut down (no aperture ring, no motor, pentamirror) D6x0-derivative - the Df is as light as things come now, but it's got a lot more redundant functionality than I'd need, and I suspect Nikon could get down to 500g with an OLED. DX is the current route, but it's not ideal as a backup - for reach maybe, although the D850 gets closer to the reach advantage than the D810 does.

 

I do use other cameras for other things (I've borrowed a Rolleiflex, I've got a Bessa R rangefinder, I have a Pentax 645, I'd still vaguely like a 5x4). I have a 1 V1, although it's mostly used in 1200fps mode. Recent DSLRs are awfully competent, though - and the flip-out screen, silent shutter, frame rate and high ISO performance on the D850 remove at least a few reasons I'd use anything else.

I wonder why Nikon never had a sales on the D610. Right now with the D750 sales it's actually less expensive than the D610 because you can sell the grip for some money.

I've seen them for price parity too. Maybe they just don't have many D610s left in stock?

 

Incidentally, I've just discovered that if you put a D850 on CH, it'll fill up memory cards really quickly. I have some triaging to do before I download...

Incidentally, I've just discovered that if you put a D850 on CH, it'll fill up memory cards really quickly. I have some triaging to do before I download...

What size of memory cards are you using; still using those 1G SD cards? :)

 

Or you mean filling up the buffer.

Nope, not the buffer - I filled the card. I haven't checked - I hope I just filled the cheap 32GB XQD that I got as a placeholder for the 128GB one I had on order. If it spilled over to the 128GB SD card which I'd set as JPEG output, I'm going to be triaging for a while. The good news is that most will be trivial rejects - I was playing with my new Mitakon 4-4.5x 20mm, and hand-held balanced in a field of bluebells swaying gently in the breeze the easiest way of getting any shots in focus was to get close, then fire a burst in CH and hope the swaying of me and the flower would put the focal plane in the right place at some point. The flip-screen helped, too. I may or may not actually have achieved anything. For future reference, hand-holding for bluebells is challenging enough for a conventional macro lens, and this wasn't the most sensible thing I've ever done. :-)

 

Normally I download everything to the computer and fail to get around to throwing away the blurry images. This time I might make more effort. Storage is cheap, but not that cheap.

Andrew,

Yes, ideally the backup should be in the SAME sensor format as your primary camera, so you don't have the FX/DX crop issue where a 50mm on an FX is like a 75 on the DX. Because then you have to get/buy lenses to give you the same/similar focal lengths. So a D750 or D610 as lighter backup to your D850. And a D7100 or the lighter D5600 to backup my D7200.

 

I briefly looked at the DX Sigma 50-100 f/1.8, but I did not like that they took away half of the zoom range from the 50-150 f/2.8 to get the larger aperture.

But I did not like the 50-150 f/2.8 VR version either. It was as big as a FX 70-200 f/2.8, so no size/weight savings. I think Sigma put the 15-150 into the same shell as the FX 70-200 f/2.8. The non VR version was smaller and lighter.

Then they make the 50-100 without VR. argh.

Yes - there's a difference between a backup camera and a camera to complement your main one. I'd consider a D7200 to be a very good complement to a D750 (offering more reach from the increased pixel density - not the smaller sensor; I have a bugbear about DX being treated as giving more reach than FX - but a reduced field of view, and similar handling) for example. The D500 doesn't offer much that the D850 doesn't, in contrast - the pixel density is roughly the same, and the frame rate difference is small. In a sense, the obvious "complement" to a D850 is a D5 - but I'm not in a position to go there. My D810 is very much a backup, in that it does the same things as the D850 only slightly less well (except for triggering flashes and quick-ISO).

 

A cheap, small mirrorless body would likely be even less capable as a comparison (except possibly for video autofocus...) but more useful for size reasons. That's not to say mirrorless has to be less capable, just that a cut-down option might be. I'm not really expecting Nikon's first full-frame mirrorless option to take on the D850 (or I wouldn't have just bought one) - I do think it might go after the market segment of the D750, which is now getting old and possibly a little poached by the A7III.