As the long-awaited sucessor to the six-year-old D700, the Nikon D750 delivers admirably. While its $2,300 price tag (£1,800/approximately AU$2,600) inhabits the upper reaches for many enthusiasts, it's a perfect camera for people who are picky about their photographs, who need better high-sensitivity quality than you can get with one of the less-expensive full-frame options or an APS-C-based dSLR, and who need speed for action shooting. Plus, it's a solid option for pros looking for a good value.
The camera comes in a couple of official kit configurations. The $3,000 bundle with the 24-120mm f3.5-5.6 lens is the only Nikon-approved kit in the US, but a 24-85mm f3.5-5.6 kit will also be available in the UK and possibly Australia (I couldn't find any available options with prices at the time this review was published, however).
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Image quality
Nikon really does a nice job on photo quality. The D750 has an excellent noise profile for both stills and video, and it produces significantly cleaner raw images than the Sony A99 does as ISO sensitivity increases -- unsurprising, since the latter is two years old and its image processing doesn't benefit from a couple years of fine tuning. I like the more neutral white balance of the Sony's default profile, though; Nikon's is just a hair shifted toward red/blue. And while the D810 maintains sharpness and tonal range better across the sensitivity range, for about $1,000 less the D750's photo quality stands up pretty well against the D810's.
JPEGs from the D750 look exceptionally clean up through ISO 1600, where a tiny bit of detail degradation begins in the in-focus areas. At ISO 3200, you can start to see some mushiness develop in the focused areas, and noise-reduction artifacts appear in the out-of-focus areas. Dynamic range displays visible decreases around ISO 3200 as well, with some clipping in low-key areas and loss of tonal distinctions in high-key areas. There's also a slight color shift between ISO 50 (Low) and ISO 100. However, I was happy with the JPEGs as high as ISO 6400 -- though that's dependent upon lighting and scene content -- and had ISO 12800 raw files that I could work with comfortably.
Movie quality looks great, even in low light, though as with the stills you start to lose tonal range about ISO 3200. Nevertheless, best quality video looks sharp, with few visible artifacts, and up to ISO 3200 there's practically no noise sparkle. I suggest switching from the default Picture Control for shooting video, though, unless you like your blacks crushed and your whites blown, even in good light.
Analysis samples
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View Full Gallery (11 Photos)
View Full Gallery (11 Photos)
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Performance
Note: We recently updated our testing setup; though the methodology is similar the lighting conditions are not, so the results aren't comparable with previous testing. We're slowly retesting some important older products, and until we have comparable results we will not be posting performance charts.
In both lab and field testing, the D750's shooting performance fared typically for this class of camera; however, it's still really slow in Live View, and there are annoying hitches when accessing some settings.
