D610 purchase

I went ahead and purchased a D610 from an eBay seller. Advertised as "new UK stock in sealed box" for £200 cheaper than the Amazon price. I was... cautious but decided to commit, reasoning that what is described is exactly what I want and if any aspect is not as described, I'm covered by eBay policy. Nothing to lose, right?

The item was dispatched quickly and arrived by special delivery the next day- a new, UK model complete with warranty card in... a box with a broken seal. Now, Nikon product registration accepted the serial number fine (and I know they do some validation on that since they prompted me about my gry market D7000 when I registered that) but I might give the warranty line a call and just check that they'll honour the warranty.

As for the camera itself, I've not had a project since I acquired it but I shot a couple of test shots of what happened to be around the place i.e. my cat.

It's nice to pair it with my FX lenses that I'd purchased prior to the switch. The AF feels great and I feel that the shots are coming out sharper than on my D7000. This probably just means that my D7000 needed a routine calibration maintenance, but I'm still pleased with what's coming out the of 610 in any case. It's worth noting that this shot was taken in a dark room and I was really pleased with its low-light AF performance (which has been something of a selling point) and the fact that it doesn't engage it's "assistance beacon" as readily as did the 7000 and seems to manage fine without it. Also very pleased with the bokeh of it when combined with the 50mm f/1.8.

I'll do another update on the camera when I've had a proper chance to use it on a project but my initial feeling is that I'm pleased with the investment.

Upgrade All The Lens!

My new lens arrived yesterday. Nothing too exciting, a NIKKOR AF-S 50mm f/1.8G, the full frame equivalent of the DX NIKKOR AF-S 50mm f/1.8D I've been using on my D7000. I've bought it in preparation of moving up to a full-frame body. In the interim, it works as a 75mm f/1.8 on the crop-sensor D7000. I'm sure I'll do an update about the lens itself before to long but what I wanted to write about today is the the process of piecemeal upgrading from the one system to the other- replacing my DX lens with an FX equivalent and the decisions about each. Here's my current gear and the options I'm considering for the upgrade:

Body:
Current (DX): D7000
Considered (FX): D610, D800
I've already written about delaying buying a D600 until the dust/oil issue was resolved and, now that the 610 has arrived, I've still got some reservations about that model. Namely, it's central clustering of focus points compared to the handsome spread on the D7000. Now, I understand that this is a problem generally on full-frame digital cameras but the 600/610 has it worse than many. Ideally, I'd really like to wait for the next iteration to see what happens there but I have some once-in-a-lifetime type travel plans coming up in a few months and I think I should have the full-frame for that hence I have to choose from what's available. Having pretty much committed to staying with Nikon (already picked up a couple FX lenses) my options are for the D610 or the D800. The D800, despite having a slightly better focus point spread, is larger and heavier and I do a lot of travel photography so I'd ideally like to keep things light where I can. Also it's virtually twice the price of the 610 and I don't think I'd see the benefit for the extra outlay.

Telephoto zoom:
Current (DX): Tamron 18-250mm
Considered (FX): Nikon 28-300mm (purchased)
I wrote about deciding on the Nikon 28-300 from the available options. It's also one of the reasons I chose to stick with Nikon rather than taking the opportunity of switching systems to try Canon- the Canon equivalent is far outside my price range. Is it the sharpest? Hell no, but it's a decent lens for a decent price and it provides the flexibility I was looking for from this piece of my kit.

Portrait prime lens:
Current (DX): Nikon 50mm f/1.8D
Considered (FX): Nikon 50mm f/1.8G (purchased)
This was an easy decision, standard cheap 50mm f/1.8 DX prime has straight equivalent for full-frame bodies. £150. Job done.

Super wide-angle lens:
Current (DX): Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8
Considered (FX): Tokina 16-28 f/2.8, Sigma 10-20 f/4-f/5.6, Nikon 14-24 f/2.8
The Nikon equivalents of the Tokina wide angle are crazy expensive (for a hobbyist, anyway). I had a brief panic where I thought that Tokina's FX model wouldn't offer an equivalent field of view to the DX equivalent and I'd be stuck but it turns out the 16-28 gives a maximum 107° vs. the 11-16's 104°. So it seems that the Tokina 16-28 will be a definite, the only alternatives being stupid expensive or f/4 max. I've taken a look at Tamron and Sigma's offerings in this space but Tamron don't do ultra-wides for full-frame cameras and the closest I can find from Sigmas is a 10-20 f/3.5 which offers 102°. So likely going to be the Tokina but shout up if you know of a good F-mount super-wide.

This was far, far longer than intended.

50% markup for D610 product fix

I'm sure that most people have seen by now that the D610 has been unveiled. Let's not pretend- this is a fix for the D600 oil/dust/shutter issue. It's not a new model and a slightly faster FPS and marginally improved weather sealing aren't going to make anyone think otherwise. And that's ok. Nikon's drawing a line under the 600 and effectively admitting its problem and releasing a follow-on free from its taint rather than fix the issue under the same model name and risk it not being realised by your average Google-search consumer. I'm fine with that. What I'm not fine with is, at time of writing in the UK, the 610 costing 50% more than the 600!

It's a problem fix for a documented and acknowledged issue. You want to relaunch as a new model to avoid the reputational damage? Fine, I'll play along. But don't charge people an outrageous premium to purchase a working product as opposed to a faulty one. It's more expensive than the D800!

I don't intend this blog to be ranty, God knows there are enough bloggers ploughing that furrow, but I couldn't help this striking me as an insult to their customer base on the part of Nikon.


Update: D610 price has dropped 10%. Body prices as per Amazon UK now stand as follows: D600 £1280 D610 £1599 D800 £1835

Introducing the D610?

There are rumours that the D600 is about to have a refresh, which is something I speculated might happen in an article I wrote about the D600 dust issue. I agree with NikonRumors that we're going to see next to nothing in terms of a spec update, just a new model to fix the dust issue that plagued (or at least was said to plague) the original model. I'm curious as to whether it will also improve the small focus area which is the other common criticism of the D600 model. Assuming this is the case, it'll still leave me with the tricky decision of paying the extra for the new model or picking up an even cheaper D600 (at time of writing, you can pick up a body for £1100, presumably this'd drop below £1000 with the release of the 610).

The D600 was launched almost exactly a year ago.