It's been a couple of years since the Nikon D7100 ($574.95 at Amazon) wowed us with its image quality and performance. Its successor, the D7200 ($1,199.95, body only), offers modest upgrades, including a larger shooting buffer and built-in Wi-Fi, but despite these improvements, we're not rating it quite as high as the D7100. The reason is simple: stiffer competition. Cameras like the Pentax K-3 and K-3 II, the Sony Alpha 77 II, the Samsung NX1 ($1,499.99 at Amazon) , and our Editors' Choice, the
Design and Features
The D7200 ($989.95 at Amazon) doesn't stray from the classic SLR form factor. It measures 4.2 by 5.3 by 3 inches (HWD) and weighs 1.5 pounds. It feels heavy in your hands, but that helps it balance with longer telephoto lenses. It's actually a bit lighter than the Canon EOS 70D ($1,199.00 at Amazon) (4.1 by 5.5 by 3.1 inches, 1.7 pounds), but the 70D has an articulating rear LCD, a feature that the D7200 lacks.
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As you'd expect with a serious SLR, the body is rife with controls, so settings can be adjusted quickly as the scene in front of you changes. Starting with the front, you'll find a depth of field preview button and a programmable Fn button between the lens mount and grip, located so they can be activated with your right hand. On the other side of the mount you'll find the AF/MF toggle switch (with a button that changes the autofocus mode), the lens release, and bracketing and flash control buttons.
Moving to the top plate, two stacked control dials sit to the left of the hot shoe, stereo mic, and pop-up flash. The top dial controls the shooting mode, and the bottom adjusts the drive mode setting; both are locking, requiring a button press in order to turn them. A large monochrome information LCD occupies much of the top plate to the right of the hot shoe, with the power switch and shutter release, Record button, and buttons to adjust the metering pattern and exposure compensation ahead of it on the top of the handgrip area. The D7200 has front and rear control dials as well.
Nikon places a group of controls at the rear, to the left of the LCD. At the top are the standard playback and delete buttons. Below those are a number of additional buttons, some of which serve double-duty—Menu, Image Protect/White Balance, Zoom In/Quality, Zoom Out/ISO, and i, which brings up an on-screen menu of additional settings. To the right of the display you'll find the AE-L/AF-L button, a directional control pad to navigate menus and adjust the active autofocus point with a center OK button, the Live View button and still/video toggle switch, and the Info button, which toggles a rear information display.
The rear LCD is a fixed panel, which may be a turnoff for photographers who are also serious about video. An articulating display isn't common in this class, however; the only competing SLRs that include one are the Sony Alpha 77 II ( at Amazon) and the Canon 70D, although you can count the Samsung NX1 as well if you're willing to consider a mirrorless camera as an alternative. The 3.2-inch LCD is quite crisp and bright thanks to a 1,229k-dot resolution that includes a group of white pixels for luminosity. It's a solid choice for reviewing images in the field, or manually focusing with precision (when combined with a magnified view).
The D7200 has built-in Wi-Fi, which isn't a common feature in the high-end APS-C SLR world. These models get updated less often than others, but even newer bodies like the Pentax K-3 II and the Canon 7D Mark II omit the feature. With the D7200 it's easy enough to copy images and videos over to an iOS or Android device using the free Nikon Wireless Mobile Utility app. Transfer of Raw images (which are automatically converted to JPG for transfer so you can view them on your phone) is supported, which isn't always the case.
Remote control via your phone is also supported, but it's a very basic implementation. You get a Live View feed from the camera on your phone's screen, the ability to tap on an area of the frame to focus, and a shutter button. Current settings are displayed when you hold the phone in portrait orientation (they are absent in landscape), but there's no way to adjust settings. You can't record video via remote, and if you do have the camera's Live View toggle set to video mode, stills will be captured at a 16:9 video aspect ratio rather than the 3:2 ratio used for still photography. Overall, the remote control interface needs a lot of work. The Pentax K-3 ($1,085.95 at Adorama) and K-3 II may not offer built-in Wi-Fi, but when they're paired with their optional FluCard Pro Wi-Fi memory card accessory, full manual camera control is available via a Web browser.
Performance and Conclusions
The D7200 is quick to turn on, focus, and fire—it does so in just 0.3-second. But its burst rate isn't the fastest in the world. If you're shooting in JPG mode it tops out at 6fps, and if you opt for Raw or Raw+JPG it dips to 5fps when using the entirety of the frame. The shooting buffer is larger than that of the D7100, but it's still a bit limited; the D7200 captures 10 Raw+JPG, 14 Raw, or 39 JPG images before slowing.
If you need a bit more speed there's a 1.3x crop mode which reduces the image size to cover only the area of the frame covered by the camera's autofocus sensor; using it boosts Raw and Raw+JPG capture to 5.9fps and JPG capture to 6.9fps. Shooting duration is improved here as well; the camera captures 14 Raw+JPG, 19 Raw, or 62 JPG images before slowing down. Still, it pales in comparison with the Sony Alpha 77 II, which shoots at 12fps without cropping the frame and captures 25 Raw+JPG, 26 Raw, or 54 JPG images at that rate.
By default the D7200 shoots Raw images at 14-bit quality, but if you need to extend the shooting buffer without giving up Raw capture, you can set it save 12-bit files. You'll lose some data in the process, limiting the amount of exposure adjustment you can apply after capture, but it's the price you pay for some extra speed. When shooting 12-bit Raw the D7200 captures images at about 5.9 frames per second, a pace which it maintains for 14 Raw+JPG or 27 Raw shots. Shooting Raw at 12-bit also improves the rate and duration when shooting in the 1.3x crop mode. It manages 6.9fps in this mode, just like shooting JPG only, but can keep that pace for 22 Raw+JPG or 48 Raw shots.
Speedy autofocus for tracking moving subjects is a selling point of any SLR of this class. The D7200 has a 51-point autofocus system that covers a good portion of the frame. You can let the camera take charge of selecting an autofocus point, select a point manually using the rear directional pad, or enable Nikon's 3D tracking system. One feature missing—and one that's available in full-frame Nikon SLRs like the D750 ($1,696.95 at Amazon) —is the ability to manually select a group of five focus points and move it around the frame manually. That's a shame; Group AF is a great tool, and my go-to autofocus mode for street shooting and reportage when I'm working with a full-frame Nikon SLR.
Focus acquisition is quick (0.05-second in bright light and 0.6-second in very dim conditions), and the tracking system is excellent. But if you're attempting to photograph small, fast-moving objects—think smaller birds in flight—the burst rate does hold the camera back a bit. Even when paired with a top-end lens (the AF-S Nikkor 200-400mm f/4G ED VR II ($6,996.95 at Amazon) ), the D7200 struggled in this regard. I had a lot more success with the same subject matter with the Canon 7D Mark II's autofocus system and 10fps burst rate.
For shooting larger targets that don't move so randomly—including larger birds, and most sports action—the D7200 is more than adequate. It's just a shame that Nikon doesn't have a true APS-C companion to its pro-grade full-frame D4S ($4,799.95 at Amazon) that can go toe-to-toe with the 7D Mark II and Canon's top-end EOS-1D X in terms of burst rate and tracking capability.
Live View focus is contrast-based, and noticeably slower than focusing through the viewfinder. In bright light it requires about 0.7-second to focus and fire, and slows only to 0.9-second in dim conditions. Still, a camera with full-time phase detection and an electronic viewfinder, like the Sony Alpha 77 II or the mirrorless Samsung NX1, will focus faster when using the rear LCD—just as fast as it does through its electronic viewfinder.
We're reviewing the D7200 as a body only, but it is available as a kit with the AF-S DX Nikkor 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR ($496.95 at Amazon) . You can check that review to see how the kit lens performs. Nikon also sells a vertical battery grip for use with the D7200, if you prefer a heftier body.
I used Imatest to see how the D7200 controls noise at high ISO settings. It keeps noise under 1.5 percent through ISO 6400, and shows about 1.8 percent at ISO 12800 when shooting JPGs at default settings. A close look at images from our ISO test scene on a calibrated NEC MultiSync PA271W($999.00 at Amazon) shows that there is some evidence of smudging at ISO 6400, but detail is still fairly strong. JPGs shot at ISO 3200 are crisper, and at ISO 1600 and below it's hard to find any fault in image quality. Conversely, pushing the camera to ISO 12800 noticeably degrades detail, and it's further worsened at ISO 25600; but even so it is one of the stronger performers we've seen at high ISO settings. The D7200 has two extended ISO settings, Hi1 (ISO 51200) and Hi2 (ISO 102400), but they are black-and-white only. Detail at Hi1 is actually on par with the color images captured at ISO 25600, which is an accomplishment, but ISO 102400 is just a blur.
See How We Test Digital Cameras
You have the option of setting noise reduction to Low, or to turn it off completely, if you prefer to gain some detail at the cost of grain. You can also shoot in Raw, which gives you an uncompressed file. In addition to cutting out in-camera noise reduction, shooting in Raw allows you to adjust color balance, exposure, and other image parameters after a shot is captured, with much more flexibility than you can manage with a compressed JPG image. If you often push the ISO to its limits, Raw shooting is recommended. Even at ISO 25600, the top sensitivity for Raw capture, detail is quite strong. The image sensor omits an optical low pass filter, so there's nothing to blur fine detail, which certainly gives it an edge over other models that use an OLPF at any ISO. Crops from our ISO test scene (taken from both Raw and JPG images) are included in the slideshow that accompanies this review.
The D7200's 1.3x crop mode comes into play again for video. When recording in cropped mode the camera can capture footage at up to 1080p60 quality in QuickTime format; when using the full APS-C image sensor the best video option available is 1080p30. Regardless of the format, footage is crisp and the camera's autofocus does a very good job of keeping the scene in focus when set to AF-F mode, within the limits of its Live View focus speed. There is some evidence of rolling shutter when recording at 30fps and panning quickly, but it's minimal. At 60fps there's no rolling shutter evident that I can see, but the footage does have the typical, unnatural look that goes along with that frame rate. If you want a more cinematic feel, the D7200 can be set to record at 24fps or 25fps at 1080p. When recording at 720p only 50fps and 60fps.
The internal stereo mic is perfectly adequate for recording dialogue up close, although it does pick up ambient noise. There's a microphone input, as well as a headphone jack for monitoring, and audio level control, all of which will appeal to serious videographers. Pro video folks will also want to take advantage of the mini HDMI port—it outputs a clean 4:2:2 8-bit signal, which can be used to record uncompressed footage to an external field recorder. A flat picture profile is also available (useful if the goal is to adjust color in the editing room), and you can adjust the ISO and shutter speed while recording. The aperture can also be set, but for some reason you need to exit Live View in order to do so, which is a bizarre extra step. Still, the D7200 is one of the better DSLRs you can get for video, especially for the type of use where autofocus speed isn't a major concern. If you prefer recording video with a more run and gun style, consider instead the Canon 70D, 7D Mark II or the Sony Alpha 77 II, all of which offer speedy autofocus in Live View. And if you're willing to look at a camera that's not an SLR, the mirrorless Samsung NX1 is loaded with pro video features, offers fast autofocus, and can also record in 4K.
The D7200 has a shutter that can fire as quickly as 1/8,000-second, and it can sync with a flash at 1/250-second. Even though it lacks a PC sync socket—useful when connecting strobes in a studio environment—it does have a proprietary USB port to connect to a PC or use an add-on GPS unit, and a connector for a wired remote control. There are dual SD/SDHC/SDXC memory card slots; you can configure them for realtime mirroring, opt to only use the second card when the first is filled, or split Raw and JPG files between two cards. Nikon includes a dedicated battery charger; the D7200 uses the same EN-EL15 battery as the full-frame D610 ($819.95 at Walmart) , D750, and D810 ($1,694.95 at Amazon) .
The Nikon D7200 offers some small improvements when compared with the D7100—including an increased shooting buffer, improvements in video capture, and built-in Wi-Fi. But other manufacturers have made greater strides in the past two years. Every other camera in this category can shoot a bit faster than the D7200—whether it be by a modest margin, like the Canon 70D (7fps) and the Pentax K-3 (8.1fps), or by a wide one, like the Canon 7D Mark II (10fps) and the Sony Alpha 77 II (12fps). And, while the D7200 has made strides in its pro video capabilities, more casual videographers may prefer the smoother autofocus offered by some other SLRs, and pros will likely look for a model with 4K capability.
Those criticisms aside, one must look at the image quality offered by the D7200, which is outstanding, as is the control layout. And, while its burst rate may be bettered by others in its class, it can shoot faster than entry-level models, and both its autofocus system and pentaprism viewfinder are much better than you'll find in less expensive cameras. The D7200's improvements certainly aren't worth upgrading from a D7100, though if you have an older Nikon SLR and don't want to move to full-frame, it's a compelling option.
Ultimately, the Canon 7D Mark II moved the bar for what a top-end APS-C SLR can be, earning Editors' Choice honors in the process. The D7200 doesn't quite match it in performance, but it's also significantly less expensive. Nikon used to sell a more serious APS-C SLR, the D300s , but it's been six long years since its announcement. Until Nikon fills that gap, system owners will have to dig deep into their pockets and consider the D4s if they want a camera that offers an incredible burst shooting rate.
The D7200 is the most serious D-SLR in Nikon's DX lineup, but it doesn't equal our Editors' Choice Canon 7D Mark II for capturing action.
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