Nikon D610 DSLR Camera Review

The Nikon D610 isn’t much of an upgrade over its predecessor, bringing only one actual change to the table, a new mirrorbox. However, the camera has been tweaked to have a better white balance system, a quieter shutter but more importantly, no more oil smudge issues on the sensor. Regardless, it performs incredibly well, but does it warrant your hard earned money?

A little bit of food and a little bit of transport, all in the name of Agra

Sights, Sounds and Signs of the Taj

The one thing that’s evident from the get go is that the images out of the D610 are incredibly sharp. The second thing that’s evident is that the sensor is particularly fond of its reds. At the Taj Mahal, we came across a lot of red stone structures and the Nikon D610 did a splendid job of not just recording the detail, but also the intricate shades of red that flowed through the ancient structures. Quite frankly, we’ve never seen reds turn out so well in any DSLR so far. Moving forth, the greens have always been a Nikon forte, so not much needs to be said about that.
 

Luscious Reds

The dynamic range on the Nikon D610 is definitely something that we should mention though. Even under the bright mid-day sun, we could easily process the RAW file to show a clear distinction between the white marble dome of the Taj Mahal and the blown out sky. Surprisingly, even though the RAW file was low in contrast, the distinction between the two was very evident. After pushing a little bit of contrast and saturation in Lightroom, we managed to get the photo to look rather good, and this is without any high-flying editing. We could have introduced the image into Photoshop and worked around with layer masks (which we might at a later point, maybe) to make it even more appealing, but we wanted to illustrate just how much of a difference even a basic setting change would make. We even managed to pull out detail in the shadow areas of some images with a very slight increase in the Blacks and Shadows levels in Lightroom.
 

The RAW files offer excellent dynamic range and a wide gamut for recovery and editing

In case you’re on the cusp of buying your first full frame DSLR and are contemplating between the D600, which will be available for much less (about Rs. 20K to Rs. 30K), and the D610, we recommend you go for the D610. There are a few simple reasons for this. For starters, there is the oil stain issue that Nikon seems to have resolved with the newer camera. Remember, Nikon hasn’t officially admitted to why the oil stain appears on the sensor, and while they did initiate a recall and have offered free cleanings to people whose sensors were affected, we don’t see why for a few thousand you’d want to get a camera that would be susceptible to breaking down and would require repair. The second thing is that the updated mirrorbox is far quieter than its predecessor. You could easily shoot live plays with the shutter set to quiet mode and do so at a whole 3 frames per second.
 

Conclusion
The Nikon D610 is not an upgrade by a long shot. In fact, it is such a minor update, that we think the oil issue must have been something very serious for Nikon to decide to release a new product altogether in order to fix it. Regardless, the D610 does everything the D600 gets right, along with a few perks of its own. However, we weren’t too happy about the fact that the D610 doesn’t allow the aperture to be changed in movie mode, something many Nikon users have been very upset about. Regardless though, the D610 is an incredibly camera to upgrade to (even as a first camera in fact) for anyone who is looking for stunning image quality. Just make sure you compliment the camera with a good lens.

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Swapnil Mathur

Swapnil was Digit's resident camera nerd, (un)official product photographer and the Reviews Editor. Swapnil has moved-on to newer challenges. For any communication related to his stories, please mail us using the email id given here. View Full Profile