One year with the Nikon D7200

It's been one year since I bought the Nikon D7200 and Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8.  It has been a very rough journey learning to get the best of it, even though I've used a number of SLRs and dSLRs and other cameras over the last 40 years.

Back in 2004, I made the jump to a digital SLR, looking at Nikon, Canon, and Pentax ahead of buying an Olympus E-1.  I weighed a great many factors and chose an all-digital system without a legacy.  The images that came from it are still quite wonderful and the body worked nearly like an extension of my arms.  I've yet to find another camera body that feels so right.

By 2007, the Nikon D300 arrived and I was re-thinking a lot of things.  I was fairly invested at this point and declined to jump to Nikon.  When Olympus brought forth the E-3, I was unhappy that it was two years late and two years behind the rest of the market.  In late 2011, I bought the Olympus E-5.  By then, the D300 was older and the E-5 used my equipment quite well, with a fairly modern sensor.  Had there been a D400 at the time, I probably would have jumped ship.

Not quite four years later, I bought the D7200, still waiting on a true D300 replacement, with the well-regarded Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 lens.

I have struggled with the camera body and still struggle with it now.  The last Nikon I used to any larger extent was the F2 film body.  When I recently talked to a Nikon representative, he hinted at the inconsistent nature of the company's interface since they started with dSLRs.

The rear of the body is an ergonomic mess.  The left-side column of five buttons is difficult to use without looking carefully at the buttons.  The button at the bottom, a stylized "i" seems to be for information, but across the rear display is a button marked "info".  Is this confusing?

Sadly, the menus are even more confusing.  They're possibly as bad as the Olympus menus, but at least, Olympus has the interactive Super Control Panel.  Nikon gives me the Informational Panel that is not interactive.  Auto Focus was extremely interesting, due to its reliance on both menu selections and the AF controls to the bottom left of the lens mount.

Thankfully, major functions in the form of four buttons replaced the mode dial on the left shoulder: Quality, Metering, White Balance, and Mode.  The first three are better there than as some sub-functions on those 5 left-hand buttons on the rear of the body.  They can easily be found by position on the D500.

When I first gave up the mode dial with the E-5, I thought that it was the stupidest thing I'd ever seen.  The E-5 relies greatly on the top display, as do the D300 and D500.  Years later, the top display works just fine, thankfully.  Even the top display of the E-1 is still working well.

Well, in a twist, due to my heart defect, I've given away all of the Nikon-related equipment.  Someone else with only Nikon equipment will make the best of the D7200, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8, Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8, Tamron 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6, and Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8 lenses.