"Official" D7100 review

[bnelson]

<p>Ok, I give up. Did I miss Shun's review of the D7100. I am waiting to pull the trigger but I was awaiting his review.</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>Sorry, I am still working on the review, but I can give you a summary.</p>

<p>In late March, Nikon sent us a test D7100 with the 18-105mm DX kit lens. I had that camera for about a month and half. Its AF is great, as good as AF on my D800E and better than older Nikon DSLRs that also use the same Multi-CAM 3500 AF module such as the D3, D700 and D300. High-ISO capability is similar to that on the D7000 and is now among the best on DX bodies. The kit lens, however, is mediocre.</p>

<p>The D7100's memory buffer is shallow. If you use it to capture wildlife and some sports as I do to capture a lot of consecutive frames, I would use lossy compressed RAW and a fast SD card such as Sandisk's Extreme Pro, 95 MB/sec. Also using 12-bit RAW helps a bit in reducing image file sizes, thus speeding up the write, but the difference between 12 bit and 14 bit is not that significant.</p>

<p>I also don't particularly like the 1.3x crop mode. It also helps reducing file sizes and gives you 7 fps, but there is no way to gray out the area outside of the capture area in the viewfinder so that it is rather easy to get mixed up when you are busy capturing action.</p>

<p>All in all, just like the D7000, $1200 is a steal for the D7100, which further improves AF on the D7000 as well as video. I bought a D7100 myself a couple of weeks ago. That tells you whether I like it or not. I had both D7100 for about a week. Cara, out Editor in Chief, has the loaner D7100 right now. Like the D7000, the D7100 is a smaller body similar in size as the D90, and there is no dedicated AF-ON button.</p>

<p>My review should be coming in a couple of weeks.</p>

[bnelson]

<p>Thanks, Shun. I will soon be joining you with a D7100</p>

 

[ShunCheung]

<p>BTW, this is my folder for the D7100 review: http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=1052968</p>

<p>There are a few images showing the D7100 and some comparing the D7000 and D7100 side by side. All images that do not show a D7100 or memory cards are captured by the D7100 with various lenses, mainly long telephotos.</p>

[matthew_lee6]

<p>Shun,<br>

Is it worth selling a D7000 to upgrade to the D7100?<br>

Thanks in advance.</p>

 

[ShunCheung]

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<p>Is it worth selling a D7000 to upgrade to the D7100?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That completely depends on your individual needs.</p>

<p>I have had a D7000 since its introduction and now have used two D7100 quite a bit. Therefore, I know both bodies quite well.</p>

<p>In your mind, what are the main shortcomings for the D7000 that you would like to upgrade? Overall, I would say the D7100 is only a moderate upgrade from the D7000, not a major step forward. I happen to like the D7000's Multi-CAM 4800 AF system. To me, the D7100's AF is better but not that significantly better mainly become the D7000 is quite good to begin with. There are many people who hate the D7000's AF and they may feel differently.</p>

<p>If you are quite happy with the D7000, maybe there is no point to upgrade.</p>

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[nishnishant]

<p>Shun,</p>

<p>What were your preferred lenses with the 7100?</p>

[urbanstylzphotography]

<p>:)</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>Ok, the review is finally out: http://www.photo.net/equipment/nikon/nikon-D7100/</p>

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New photo.net links usually takes a few hours to become effective. The above link works on my computer but not on my phone. If you get a 404 not found, be patient and come back in a few hours.

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