Nikon D600 review

Full-frame SLRs used to be out of reach for most amateur photographers, but that’s beginning to change. The Canon EOS 6D and Nikon D600 both use full-frame sensors housed in more consumer-orientated bodies. With prices below £1,500 exc VAT, they’re enticing propositions for amateur enthusiasts, and might just make the perfect backup camera for professionals too.

The Nikon D600 is the first to arrive in the shops, and our testing lab. It sits neatly between the cheaper Nikon D7000 and the pricier D800 in terms of size, weight and sensor resolution. Physically, it’s much closer to the D7000, though, with dual SDXC slots and an almost identical layout of controls. This isn’t a criticism. The D7000’s sublime ergonomics belie its price, and in practice there’s very little difference between all three cameras when it comes to accessing key functions. Almost everything can be adjusted by holding down one of the many labelled buttons and turning a command dial. Thankfully, this includes toggling Auto ISO on and off – something the D7000 leaves buried in the menu.

The only drawback we found was that reaching for the ISO speed, white balance or JPEG quality controls directly after shooting resulted in us inadvertently locking or zooming the previous picture. The D800 avoids this by splitting these shooting and playback functions to separate buttons. Meanwhile, those who shoot fast-paced action may regret the lack of an AF-On button for triggering autofocus separately to the shutter release. The AE Lock button or the Function button on the front of the camera can be assigned to this task, but this might not be enough to satisfy professionals who need to switch regularly between cameras.

The autofocus sensor has 39 points, nine of which are cross-type. This matches the specifications of the D7000, and the layout of the points is identical – but they haven’t been modified for the full-frame sensor. While on the D7000 they cover a large area, on the D600 they’re bunched more in the centre. This is good news when using the 3D tracking mode to follow moving subjects around the frame, but only if they stay relatively near the centre. For subjects towards the edges, the only option is to focus, recompose and shoot. For us, this is the D600’s biggest weakness, but it’s something we could live with.

The pricier D800 boasts a 36-megapixel sensor, but our comparisons with the 22.3-megapixel Canon EOS 5D Mark III revealed that the D800’s massive resolution comes at the expense of slower performance and higher noise at fast ISO speeds. Predictably, the D600’s 24.3-megapixel sensor can’t match the D800 for details, but it challenges the 5D Mark III for low noise and fast performance.

Continuous performance is at 5.5fps, just a little short of the 5D Mark III’s 6fps and a big improvement on the D800’s 4fps. Testing with a UHS-1 SDHC card rated at 95MB/sec, it kept going for 68 frames before slowing to 3.4fps. That was only with lens distortion correction disabled. With it enabled, however, the slowdown was quicker and sharper, to 2.2fps after 15 frames. Raw mode gave us 16 frames at 5.5fps before slowing to 1.9fps – a fine achievement, although the 5D Mark III has considerably more stamina in this regard.

Noise levels at fast ISO speeds were impressively low, but by ISO 3200, JPEGs exhibited a fair amount of chroma noise compared to the silky-smooth output of the Canon EOS 5D Mark III. Increasing the D600’s noise reduction strength helped a little, but it was only when we compared these cameras’ raw output that the D600 really began to shine. Here, the two cameras were hard to separate, but if we had to pick a winner, the D600 just clinched it. Considering how bowled over we were by the 5D Mark III’s noise levels, the fact that this £1,287 camera narrowly beats it is a stunning achievement.

Its colour output threw up no surprises, with rich, lifelike tones in JPEGs and well-judged exposures in tricky lighting conditions. It erred towards under-exposure to avoid clipped highlights, which makes sense as it’s much easier to lift shadows than rescue highlights in post processing. HDR shooting is built in, and worked well for static subjects.

The video mode put in a sterling performance, with 1080p capture at a choice of frame rates, superb picture and sound quality, and continuous autofocus that’s passable for casual use. As usual for an SLR, critical use demands fixed or manual focus. There are microphone in and headphone out sockets and full manual exposure control, but it lacks the pricier cameras’ shutter- and aperture-priority modes for video.

The D600 makes a tempting backup camera for professionals, but we’re more inclined to recommend the D800 for this, especially since it has already been discounted to around £1,700 exc VAT. Its controls and autofocus are much more in keeping with the D4, and it’s also worth noting that, while the D800 sits in Nikon’s professional range, the D600 is from the consumer range and therefore isn’t subject to the same level of after-sales support.

For amateur enthusiasts and semi-professionals, however, the D600 is an astoundingly good deal. It lacks very little compared to the D800 and 5D Mark III, and on the key issues of performance and image noise, it’s better than the D800. We loved the 5D Mark III, but not enough to buy one. With the D600, we’re seriously tempted.

Click the links below for full resolution sample shots:
Sample 1, shot at ISO 3200, f/4.5, 1/320s shutter speed (11MB)
Sample 2, shot at ISO 100, f/4.5, 1/80s shutter speed (7MB)
Sample 3, shot at ISO 100, f/6.3, 1/160s shutter speed (7MB)
Sample 4, shot at ISO 100, f/5, 1/100s shutter speed (13MB)

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