Upgrading D5600 to D7200 (1 Viewer)

[Apodidae49]

After a year with the D5600, I have the opportunity to upgrade to a D7200 body. I am trading in my 5600 and the 18-55 kit lens for a used body in vgc and have my 18-200 DX VR2 and 70-300 DX VR to use with the new camera.

At the moment I’m on the Ria Formosa in Portugal pursuing birds and I think the way forward, in my hobby, is a longer zoom and I just happen to have a significant birthday upcoming at the end of the year and a big lens may be in the gift stakes.

As someone remarked to me, this time last year, the ergonomics of a Tamron 150-600 on a D5600 may be a bit of a push so the D7200 beckons.

 

[bflginidx]

I traded in my Panasonic bridge camera for a refurbished D7200 a year and a half ago and am really pleased with it. Focusing is much more reliable and the image quality is very good. I've paired it with a Tamron 100-400 for all-around nature photography. I walk a lot so didn't want the added weight of a 600mm zoom.

Best of luck with your new body. I think you'll be happy with it.

 

[marcsantacurz]

I think the d7200 is a great value and you can even shoot in 1.3x crop mode (overall 2x crop) so your 300mm will be 600mm equivalent (or a 400mm is 800mm equivalent). It will bump up your FPS a little to do this in the camera rather than just crop in post (otherwise, you'd just shoot in normal DX mode and crop in post).

I think the AF will be a noticeable improvement for shooting moving things.

Marc

 

[Apodidae49]

Can I use a 1.4TC with the D7200 and the 70-300 DX VR zoom that I own or are they only good with prime lenses?

 

[marcsantacurz]

Can I use a 1.4TC with the D7200 and the 70-300 DX VR zoom that I own or are they only good with prime lenses?

I don't think the Nikon TC will mount on that lens. Nikon put an extra piece of metal in there so it only mounts on specific lenses (see the Nikon website).

You could get a 3rd party TC, like from Tamron or kenko that would physically mount, but I doubt the results would be worth it. you'd be better just cropping more. That lens is f/6.3 so with a 1.4x TC it would be an f/9. Your focus, if it works, would only be in the very center of the sensor and it would be slow and inaccurate. The image quality likely would not be that great either.

Marc

 

[Apodidae49]

I don't think the Nikon TC will mount on that lens. Nikon put an extra piece of metal in there so it only mounts on specific lenses (see the Nikon website).

You could get a 3rd party TC, like from Tamron or kenko that would physically mount, but I doubt the results would be worth it. you'd be better just cropping more. That lens is f/6.3 so with a 1.4x TC it would be an f/9. Your focus, if it works, would only be in the very center of the sensor and it would be slow and inaccurate. The image quality likely would not be that great either.

Marc

Good advice, thanks Marc.

 

[Neil G.]

I would also consider Nikons excellent 200-500 lens......i had the D7200 with this lens and it produced some superb images with exceptional detail.The other advantage with this lens is that it has a constant f5.6 throughout the zoom range.
The extra 100mm you get on the tamron and sigma lenses isn't as useful as the f5.6 aperture that the 200-500 provides.......500mm on the D7200 provides plenty of magnification for most bird subjects.

 

[Apodidae49]

Just received my D7200 and I have to say, compared to the D5600, it’s a beast! Going to take me a while to get to grips with setting and controlling even the basic functions as the D5600 touchscreen was very intuitive. I’ll mostly be using it with my 18-200 DX VR G2 ED and the 70-300 DX VR ED until I can get a long lens for birding but that’s in the birthday money class, and a couple of months away yet.

 

[marcsantacurz]

Lookup something like "d7200 guide" or "d7200 training" on youtube and there's a bunch of helpful videos.

Thom Hogan's guides are usually great. His d7200 guide is about US$30. http://www.dslrbodies.com/books/bythom-complete-guides-/nikon-d7200-guide-2.html

I'm not sure what state the settings were in when you got it. You might want to start by doing a factory reset and making sure the firmware is up-to-date, then go from there. You can also save your settings to an SD card every so often so you have some backups.

You should be able to find recommended settings for "sports" and use that pretty well as a starting point.

Marc

 

[Apodidae49]

Can’t see anything untoward in the settings, by what do I know? I’ve set it to Aperture Priority, 200ISO, AF-A, Single Release, 9 AF Points and had a potter through some of the simpler stuff in the book. A lot of it looks like rocket science though but I’ve found, and saved, a half-hour tutorial and will look for some more basic stuff on YouTube as I go on.

 

[marcsantacurz]

I usually go for AF-C or AF-S and skip AF-A -- I don't want the camera guessing AF-C or AF-S for me. And when I'm shooting birds, it's pretty much always in AF-C mode. I might change between single release mode or CH release modes, but I'm pretty good at only doing 1 or 2 releases on a press in CH if that's all I want so I really only go to single release if using a flash.

I shoot in manual (M) mode. Set the shutter speed and aperture at what you want, then float the ISO. Set the ISO to the _minimum_ you want it to use then turn on Auto-ISO. It will never go below the value you selected. For you, I think that's ISO 100 on the d7200.

I find M mode better the A mode because I don't want the camera guessing the shutter speed. I usually leave the SS up at 1/2000 or so for BIF and if I come across a perched bird where I have some time, I'll drop it down to 1/400 - 1/600 or so. This is with a 500mm lens. With a 300mm, I might go down to 1/200.

There are some configurations under auto-ISO so if you do want to use A mode and auto ISO you can give it some guidelines about minimum shutter speed.

I use exposure compensation alot. For BIF with a sky background, I usually set to +2/3 (+0.7) to +1 1/3 (+1.3) EV because the bright background will wash out the little bird, often even with spot metering. For birds with normal backgrounds, I'll got down to +1/3 EV or +0 EV. Rarely, for bright white birds I might go to -1/3 EV against a dark background.

I shoot raw only. Sometimes I might do Jpeg (fine) and set sharpening +2, saturation +3, but I prefer raw. It helps me recover photos a lot better if the exposure was off a bit. But it takes a lot more space and more time in post. Nikon has some good colors right out of the camera.

I usually use single point AF of 3D AF (which is basically single point). But usually the single or 3d. It helps me pick out the bird against clutter. The camera AF gets confused about foreground clutter pretty easily. For some BIF I will use full frame AF or 9-point or 72-point.

Marc

 

[Apodidae49]

This is a shot I took with the D5600 last year when I was experimenting with settings and the 70-300 DX VR. The camera settings were Shutter Priority mode 1/1250th sec, Continuous H release, AF-C, 3D Tracking and 800 ISO. This was giving me (apparently) too small an aperture but I was reasonably pleased with the result.

The settings I detailed in my previous post are just for pottering around and getting used to the camera.

 

[njlarsen]

One comment: using ACDSee post processing it takes me the same time to do raw vs jpg images - and neither take very long except if I feel I need to mask part of an image against some adjustment. That usually only happens with high iso images. Disclaimer: I use Panasonic camera but can’t imagine the ACDSee part is that camera dependent.

I also find that RAW images give a better result most of the time.

Niels

 

[Apodidae49]

One comment: using ACDSee post processing it takes me the same time to do raw vs jpg images - and neither take very long except if I feel I need to mask part of an image against some adjustment. That usually only happens with high iso images. Disclaimer: I use Panasonic camera but can’t imagine the ACDSee part is that camera dependent.

I also find that RAW images give a better result most of the time.

Niels

I don’t have any processing software to do RAW images and my son informs me that my laptop is too slow to be able to do anything anyway. I’ll continue to shoot in .jpeg Large/Fine and feel my way into it with a few tutorials and BF advice.

 

[Chosun Juan]

Can’t see anything untoward in the settings, by what do I know? I’ve set it to Aperture Priority, 200ISO, AF-A, Single Release, 9 AF Points and had a potter through some of the simpler stuff in the book. A lot of it looks like rocket science though but I’ve found, and saved, a half-hour tutorial and will look for some more basic stuff on YouTube as I go on.

Have a look at the link and advice in this thread -
https://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=371415
should be a good start to get you up and running.
2nd what Marc said - investing in Tom's D7200 guide could be worthwhile.



Chosun :gh:

 

[Apodidae49]

Started with this basic tutorial which was a very good step by step guide to picking up the camera and setting up to take photos.

https://youtu.be/qYMr_VcwCyI

 

[marcsantacurz]

That looks like a nice gentle introduction to the d7200. It actually applies to most Nikons, at least the first half I watched.

Marc

 

[marcsantacurz]

I don’t have any processing software to do RAW images and my son informs me that my laptop is too slow to be able to do anything anyway. I’ll continue to shoot in .jpeg Large/Fine and feel my way into it with a few tutorials and BF advice.

Jpeg will be just fine, especially for starting out. It is also much smaller files.

Nikon does distribute some software to process their raw files into jpeg or other formats. It's free. I think it's called Capture NX-D. There's another free program called View NX-i or something like that. So, if you get interested in raw you can take this route and not spend money on Lightroom or some other raw processor.

The main thing is use the camera and take pictures. Once you're proficient enough that you think jpeg might be holding you back, you can look at it then. Lots of people do just fine with jpeg. There's lots of other things to master before worrying about raw.

Marc

 

[nikonmike]

If your shooting jpeg you may need to adjust the in-camera settings a bit, you could start by setting the sharpening to plus 5 but leave any noise reduction alone, you can up the contrast a little and see what you think.

As for Nikon software if you use View nx then start to shoot raw at a later date view will show an image which has the in-camera adjustments applied.

You can just use the shown jpeg if you are happy with it or open the raw to edit.

https://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/products/166/ViewNX_2.html

 

[Apodidae49]

Having trouble connecting the camera to my iPhone 6 via WiFi using Nikon Snap Bridge. Following all the steps (and watched YouTube Help videos) but it’s hanging at the Connecting screen. Any ideas gents?