I have a couple D850s that I use for work, so I picked up a D750 as a smaller fun body to use primarily for taking pics of friends and family. As I spent relatively little on the D750, I find that I bring it with me everywhere (in cases where I would leave the D850 at home because it’s either a little too big or because I don’t want to risk a few grand in sketchier neighborhoods.) I’ve since started using it for high volume corporate headshot jobs with the MBD16 grip because it’s lighter than my gripped D850 and 24mp is plenty for those kinds of jobs.
I am still blown away by the D850, especially gripped to enable 9fps, and I have no plans to get rid of them but I’ve been pleasantly surprised how well the D750 keeps up given all the marketing hype around the latest and greatest bodies. I do however kind of hope they come up with an upgrade to the D750 but I’m not holding my breath given my guess is that Nikon is focusing their mid-range pro body efforts towards full frame mirrorless.
Things I love about the D750:
1) Great viewfinder
2) Ultra quick AF
3) Relatively small especially when paired with the 35 f18g, 50 f18g, and 85 f1.8g
4) Dual card slots that take the same storage format
5) Pop up flash for casual snapshots (I actually find a small piece of paper held over the flash does great as a diffuser when I’m just taking photos of friends in a restaurant)
6) Great and super cheap vertical grip - I purchased an authentic mbd16 for only $70 on eBay. FYI - make sure your battery grip doesn’t have the serial number “2000082” as that means you’ve purchased a counterfeit one.
7) Exceptional low light and high iso performance
8) The wifi app actually works great as it uses the older WMU app versus the newer SnapBridge one
Things I don’t love:
1) AF performance on the non-cross type points is a bit hit or miss
2) Buffer isn’t great
3) USB port doesn’t have a port protector like on the D850
And of course here are a few recent snaps from my D750
Shot a few day job in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand with the D750. Performed great. All images below are non-retouched (so excuse the flyaway hairs), just basic post-processing tweaks in Capture One.
The D750 is amazing value and considering the body was announced in Sept 2014, almost 4 years old! If you look around you can pick up a great copy for less than 1K USD. I love the pop up flash and integrates well with the SB 5000's too when we use both the D850/D750 for shoots with the same lighting setup. The form factor of the D750 is my ideal for a FF body in terms of size/weight and grip.
All said the camera I always pick up was the D810 and now the D850. Go figure
The D750 has the same sensor as the D600 which was released Sep 2012. It has superior post processing though, including raising the maximum ISO by one step (amplified up to 12k ISO intead of just 6400, extended up to 50k instead of just 25k). The output above ISO 12k is pretty unuseable.
I definitely fancy having dual sd card slots.
I only use the popup flash to trigger external flash units. Otherwise the light from the popup flash is absolutely awful.
I never use eBay; I paid 200€ for my (original but used) grip. I wouldnt even bother to check if a $70 offer would be legal, but if it actually was then congrats. Its a stupid cheap offer and original grips are usually much more expensive.
I never use WiFi.
I never use the USB port from any of my cameras.
I hate that the D750 has the AF of the D810 and D4(s), but still has a smaller AF area.
As an owner of a D750 I had the chance to rent a D850 for a trip to Iceland. Although the DR on the D750 is still tops, the D850 does an amazing job at surpassing it at a substantial increase in resolution.
Even so, I used the D750 for well over 90% of the trip. Some for the reasons stated above, but for me the ability to switch user modes quickly (U1 & U2 & Manual--essentially U3), going from landscape (aperture priority, single point focus) to action (shutter priority, focus tracking) with just a turn of a single dial.
In all fairness, my D850 arrived a day late because of the blizzards this past winter, so I didn't have time to familiarize myself as I would have liked. But having gone through the manual beforehand and setting it up as close to the D750 as possible I was hoping the learning curve would be minimized.
Even so, it appears what one can do with a simple dial movement on the D750 would take a number of steps and menu diving on the D850.
Yep it's a very good camera...I wish for a right hand ISO button and 1/8000 but not much else. You touch on some things that also bother me about other models.
1- Dual card slots of different format
I will NEVER understand this and it's very annoying
2- U1/U2 vs Nikon Banks. I hate Nikon banks. They need to seriously drop that idea and go with dial settings.
3- I shudder to think the WiFi app is actually better than Snapbridge. Nikon is way behind the curve on remote control.
You can program the video record button to ISO! It bugged the hell out of me as well until I learned that, as the iso button is on the right side on the D850. And yes, 1/8000 SS would be nice.
And I agree, SnapBridge is horrible.
cputeq wrote:
Yep it's a very good camera...I wish for a right hand ISO button and 1/8000 but not much else. You touch on some things that also bother me about other models.
1- Dual card slots of different format
I will NEVER understand this and it's very annoying
2- U1/U2 vs Nikon Banks. I hate Nikon banks. They need to seriously drop that idea and go with dial settings.
3- I shudder to think the WiFi app is actually better than Snapbridge. Nikon is way behind the curve on remote control.
cputeq wrote:
Yep it's a very good camera...I wish for a right hand ISO button and 1/8000 but not much else. You touch on some things that also bother me about other models.
1- Dual card slots of different format
I will NEVER understand this and it's very annoying
2- U1/U2 vs Nikon Banks. I hate Nikon banks. They need to seriously drop that idea and go with dial settings.
3- I shudder to think the WiFi app is actually better than Snapbridge. Nikon is way behind the curve on remote control.
Exactly why i haven't upgraded from my d750 If anything, still debating between adding a D810 or D500 (but Snapbridge is terrible, so i may just get a D810
A camera is simply a tool and no reason not to use the one that you find most comfortable for shooting. In my case the D750 is a tad too small for my hands and so i get fatigue with extensive shooting with mine. The D500 and D850 and D5 are much more comfortable for my hands.
My wife shoots with Olympus MFT cameras and lenses and being half the size and half the weight I would like to have gone this route but I find the bodies too small for my hands and so I stay with my large and heavy FX cameras and lenses.
Agreed - however the point of my original post was that I’ve been pleasantly surprised how well the D750 keeps up from an image quality standpoint to a class leading camera like the D850.
I have been trying to think of a reason to add a D5 to my kit, but alas I can’t seem to come up with a good justification. Shooting the D5 makes the D750 feel like a toy
elkhornsun wrote:
A camera is simply a tool and no reason not to use the one that you find most comfortable for shooting. In my case the D750 is a tad too small for my hands and so i get fatigue with extensive shooting with mine. The D500 and D850 and D5 are much more comfortable for my hands.
My wife shoots with Olympus MFT cameras and lenses and being half the size and half the weight I would like to have gone this route but I find the bodies too small for my hands and so I stay with my large and heavy FX cameras and lenses....Show more →
sungphoto wrote:
You can program the video record button to ISO! It bugged the hell out of me as well until I learned that, as the iso button is on the right side on the D850. And yes, 1/8000 SS would be nice.
And I agree, SnapBridge is horrible.
The day I figured out I could change the record button to ISO was life changing for me. I still love my 750 and I get GAS all the time for other gear, but almost never a new body.
sungphoto wrote:
You can program the video record button to ISO! It bugged the hell out of me as well until I learned that,
Great tip thanks -- just did it. For some reason I was thinking I'd want to keep it just in case I needed to fire up a quick movie, but it doesn't work like that anyways so all's good
The feature that I like most about my D750 is actually that you can program the menu button to show 100% magnification, both in lifeview and in review mode, for nailing focus perfectly with manual focus lenses and for checking if you nailed focus (with whatever lens) right after you took the image.
Sauseschritt wrote:
The feature that I like most about my D750 is actually that you can program the menu button to show 100% magnification, both in lifeview and in review mode, for nailing focus perfectly with manual focus lenses and for checking if you nailed focus (with whatever lens) right after you took the image.
This is another great feature. I thought this was a common ability on most higher end Nikon bodies. Is it not?
bocajrs wrote:
We may not see a D750 replacement in a DSLR body, maybe mirrorless.
I'm guessing you're right, however I really hope we're wrong
I would totally buy an update to the D750 if it had some improvements in live view AF performance, as well as perhaps borrowing the AF system from the D850 Hell if it had the same D750 sensor and the D850 AF module I'd buy it.
It would seem logical that you'd want to milk as much revenue out of the investment into developing a new sensor with the requisite on chip AF performance for mirrorless, and I'm no engineer but it seems like it would make sense to plop it into a DSLR body even if it ends up being kind of a "parts-bin special". I guess time will tell. I just really enjoy the form factor of the D750 vs the mirrorless cameras I've owned.
Sauseschritt wrote:
The D750 has the same sensor as the D600 which was released Sep 2012. It has superior post processing though, including raising the maximum ISO by one step (amplified up to 12k ISO intead of just 6400, extended up to 50k instead of just 25k). The output above ISO 12k is pretty unuseable.
I definitely fancy having dual sd card slots.
I only use the popup flash to trigger external flash units. Otherwise the light from the popup flash is absolutely awful.
I never use eBay; I paid 200€ for my (original but used) grip. I wouldnt even bother to check if a $70 offer would be legal, but if it actually was then congrats. Its a stupid cheap offer and original grips are usually much more expensive.
I never use WiFi.
I never use the USB port from any of my cameras.
I hate that the D750 has the AF of the D810 and D4(s), but still has a smaller AF area. ...Show more →
I unfortunately purchased a counterfeit one on eBay first, which upon receipt I realized was clearly from the same factory that the Meike, Vello, etc grips are made just with some convincing fake packaging (even had a counterfeit warranty card) and Nikon branding on it. The serial number was obviously fake, but less obvious was that the front and rear dials were not rubber coated like the authentic grip, and the joystick was one of those clicky and inaccurate ones typically found on replicas. Thankfully was able to make a return claim on it, and have been flagging counterfeits on eBay since. Unfortunately the number of counterfeits still out there (and eBay's seemingly lackadaisical approach to screening them) has meant that authentic grip auctions are under-valued relative, so I snagged a real one from someone that had priced it low on auction.
Otherwise, the authentic MBD16 grips are generally around $150 used on craigslist, which is still a good deal I think.
This would be very nice. The best of both worlds with current generation DSLR AF performance when the mirror is down and mirrorless performance in live view. I hope Nikon is thinking this way with offering additional value to ongoing DSLR models and spreading sensor development cost by using the same sensors in both lines.
I would totally buy an update to the D750 if it had some improvements in live view AF performance, as well as perhaps borrowing the AF system from the D850 Hell if it had the same sensor and the D850 AF module I'd buy it.
It would seem logical that you'd want to milk as much revenue out of the investment into developing a new sensor with the requisite on chip AF performance for mirrorless, and I'm no engineer but it seems like it would make sense to plop it into a DSLR body even if it ends up being kind of a "parts-bin special". I guess time will tell. I just really enjoy the form factor of the D750 vs the mirrorless cameras I've owned....Show more →
Great shots Sung!
Hell if it had the same D750 sensor and the D850 AF module I'd buy it.