Nikon D780 Camera
The Nikon D780 is the long-awaited successor to the highly rated D750. Popular cameras, such as the D750, are often updated every two years. However, the D780 update did not appear until five years later.
To some extent, this is due to the fact that building the Z system diverted engineering resources from Nikon’s DSLR division. The good news is that the D780 profited from this.
At first sight, the D780 appears to be very similar to the D750, both in terms of body and specifications. The D750 achieved 6.5 fps, while the D780 achieves 7 fps (but it can reach 12 fps in Live View with the silent shutter enabled). The viewfinder remains the same. The image sensor is still 24 megapixel. Both cameras feature two SD card slots. Both use the EN-EL15 battery. Despite numerous minor differences, the D750 and D780 bodies appear to be nearly identical. Heck, each cost US$2300 upon launch.
However, unlike the D750, the D780 lacks an inbuilt flash and does not support vertical grip. So a simple look at the specifications appears to infer that Nikon did nothing but delete some features during the last five years.
The D780’s imaging chain is almost the same as the Z6’s: it uses the same 24mp BSI image sensor with on-sensor phase detect, great data off-ramping, high-quality full-frame 4K video, and all of the EXPEED6 enhancements and upgrades that came with the Z6. The D780’s exposure/focus chain is nearly identical to the D5 chain, with the same prism-based 181k exposure sensor and D5 focus algorithms (albeit employing the D750’s older 51-point CAM3500II focus sensor).
Additional features came to the D780 from other recent Nikon cameras, as well: touchscreen capability, in-camera digitizing for negatives, focus stack shooting, silent shooting, face detection, focus peaking, exposure zebras, Effects shooting, the new customizable i button menu, and a host of other small bits and pieces that were picked up and refined from the Z6, D850, D5, D6, and other recent Nikons.
Some of the improvements are subtle (but really beneficial). When zoomed in when analyzing an image on the Rear LCD, click the i button and select Quick Crop to get a cropped image that matches what you’re seeing. This initially appeared in the Z6/Z7 and is a welcome addition for event and sports photographers who wish to quickly get cropped shots out of the camera via SnapBridge. I discovered over a dozen of these minor additions/changes to the D780 that just made it a more useful tool than the D750. For example, you can also interrupt a Multiple Exposure and preview how the assembled image looks so far, then do something about that. You have to look deep in the feature set to see these small changes, but every one I encountered deserves a kudos to Nikon for catching something subtle, but useful.
The big news is that Z6 image sensor (and the accompanying EXPEED6 processor). That’s because it opens up a new aspect to the D780. While the D780 looks, feels, and operates like an improved D750 when used as a DSLR, in Live View it becomes a state-of-the-art mirrorless beast. For example, the Z6 sensor provides non-cropped, oversampled 4K video with the capability of 10-bit N-Log external recording. That’s basically the best case for full frame video in an interchangeable lens camera at the moment, and the D780 gets that, too.
Although the D750 was a bit of a video slacker (max 1080P/60), the D780 quickly rises to the top of the ILC video capabilities list. It can record up to 30 fps in 4K UHD and 120 fps in 1080P.
How's it Perform?
Battery: Uncanny in DSLR mode. Sure enough, in sports shooting I was easily getting well over 2000 shots a charge, and that was despite a fair amount of SnapBridge use. In Live View mode, things are more restrictive, being more like an older DSLR in EN-EL15 battery consumption; I saw sessions that ranged from 400 to 800 shots per charge, depending upon what I was doing. Video, I got at least an hour-and-a-half consistently from a fully charged battery (remember, in camera you can only record up to 30 minutes of video at a time).
All of these outcomes are what I would call good. Video is fairly battery-intensive, and I don’t know of any camera that performs better than the D780 while running at full frame internal recording or even HDMI output. Still capabilities are also good, to the point where most users will likely just need one spare battery. I only used an extra battery once, after a lengthy sports session in which I shot numerous extended scenes.
Buffer: I don’t remember feeling restricted by the buffer, though I know I hit it a couple of times, mostly because I was being aggressive to see where the breaking point came. At 68 frames worst case with a state-of-the-art UHS-II card, that’s almost 10 seconds of continuous shooting using the viewfinder at maximum frame rate. It was actually more difficult for me to hold focus and composition for long sequences than it was to fight through buffer performance on the D780.
I really don’t think buffer will be an issue for anyone utilizing cutting-edge SD cards, especially if you consider other aspects (e.g., 12-bit raw above ISO 400). This is considerably different from the D750, which the D780 replaces: the older camera had a worst-case buffer with raw of 15 photos and a slower card slot, implying that the D750 buffer did get in the way pretty frequently when shooting action constantly.
Autofocus: Nikon’s mention of the D780 using the D5 algorithms put my hopes up a little higher than actual performance showed. After all, the D5 is, by my testing, the best of breed. The D5 finds and tracks motion better than any other DSLR I’ve used to date (disclosure: I haven’t tried the new Canon 1DX Mark III or Nikon D6 yet).
Well, the D780 isn’t quite a D5. But it’s clearly better than the D750 at acquisition and tracking when using the viewfinder. One of the issues is the narrower angle of view of the D780 focus sensors (they take up less of the image area than the D5’s sensors). What happened more often than I wanted when shooting action was that I lost focus because I didn’t keep my subject in that smaller area (note: I have excellent sideline access to most sports, and I’m often panning with focus near the minimum focus distance, so I’m really pushing the system; the shot below is full frame, no crop).
The good news is that the D780 is fast to reacquire focus in those situations (and you can make it a little more reactive by dropping the lock-on tracking value). So it wasn’t that I got sequences with lots of shots out of focus. What I got instead were some complex motion/panning sequences where I’d lose the composition some, get an out of focus shot, reacquire proper composition and the focus would quickly reacquire, too.
Final Thoughts
At announcement, a lot of people immediately dismissed the D780. Same 24mp sensor size, same older DSLR focus sensor, loss of the flash and vertical grip, and a host of other “not enough” complaints surfaced in various fora whining. This dismissal is pretty much the same as the dismissal that the D7500 introduction got, and it turned out to be a very good camera.
Those folk dismissing the D780 were wrong. It’s a highly capable camera that I find to be far better than the D750 it replaces in almost every way. Moreover, it’s arguably one of the best DSLRs ever made, and certainly so at its price point. Even better still, it has the Z6 bones inside for video and Live View, which makes the D780 the closest thing to a hybrid DSLR/mirrorless camera we’ve seen to date.
Nikon’s engineers basically were tinkering internally in creating the D780, thus be careful of dismissing it because it seems so similar to a D750 on the outside. With this new camera you’ll see features and performance inherited from the Z6, the D850, and even the D5. Small things that often get overlooked in spec sheets and even reviews abound. For example, the ability to use Interval Timer Shooting to get both a set of raw still files and a 4K time-lapse video simultaneously is really nice, and just one more of those highly refined touches in the D780.
Image quality is excellent, too. If you liked the D750 shooting at ISO 6400, you’re going to like the D780 better. And above 6400, the D780 clearly distinguishes itself from its predecessor (and pretty much all other 24mp cameras, too). Video is also exceptionally better, and essentially state of the art for a DSLR.
True, you don’t get an internal flash and you can’t add a vertical grip. This seems to be the “new Nikon” for some reason, and even though I don’t really use those things, I still don’t like this direction they’ve taken. We’ve seen that same exact play now with the D7500, and pieces of that play with the D850, Z50, Z6, and Z7. I don’t tend to use either option, but I think that someone at Nikon is trying to narrow the notion of what a “system” is, and that definitely is troubling. I want cameras to be more open in their system nature, not less so.
Still, the D780 body is small enough that turning it sideways for verticals isn’t really a pain for me, and even a small SB-500 Speedlight mounted on the D780 is a better solution than an internal flash, as far as I’m concerned. Your mileage may vary, but I didn’t actually find those two missing elements impacted me significantly.
To me, the D750 felt “rough” when it first appeared. A nice camera, yes, but it had a lot of rough edges and an unhealthy early childhood (multiple shutter issues). The D780 feels the opposite: “refined.” The D780 shows just how good Nikon engineering can be when it pays close attention to details and leaves no electron unturned.