The WINNER IS… Nikon D750

In the enthusiast category, Nikon’s latest SLRs are also their greatest, in both the FX and DX camps

The D750 is the outright winner of the group. It’s a phenomenal camera that combines supremely accurate, reliable and consistent autofocus, metering and auto white balance performance, equating to sumptuous image quality time after time. The body is compact and lightweight for a full-frame camera, with excellent handling and intuitive yet highly advanced controls. The tilting rear screen is an extra bonus for Live View and movie shooting, enabling you to compose shots from tricky angles.

Naturally, the D750 is outclassed by the D810 when it comes to outright resolution, but it fights back with squeaky-clean image quality under low-lighting conditions, even at very high ISO settings. Ultimately, the more expensive D810 is only really worth considering if you’re determined to capture the absolute maximum of fine detail and texture in your photos, at the expense of clean high-ISO images.

At the lower end of the full-frame price scale, the older D610 is a good buy at the price, but it simply can’t match the D750 and D810 for image quality or reliably consistent metering and auto white balance. The D610 also has a relatively low-rent 39-point autofocus system.

Moving to DX-format bodies, the D5500 and D7200 both have a lot to offer. The D5500 is incredibly compact and lightweight. It lacks advanced direct-access controls for most shooting settings, but the articulating, touch-sensitive screen is some compensation. Even so, the D7200 wins out, with slightly richer image quality, more consistent metering and top-performance autofocus. For our money, it’s Nikon’s best DX camera ever, and a real improvement over the D7000 and D7100.