The best Nikon cameras in 2022 | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Nikon has long been at the top of the mar­ket, reg­u­lar­ly updat­ing its line of devices. This brand is cho­sen by both pro­fes­sion­als and ama­teur pho­tog­ra­phers. Any user can find a suit­able mod­el for him­self: depend­ing on the pur­pose, the cam­eras dif­fer in func­tion­al­i­ty and tech­ni­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics. They also have dif­fer­ent prices.

Nikon makes some of the best cam­eras on the mar­ket. Pho­to: rtings.com

In the mate­r­i­al, we will con­sid­er the top Nikon cam­eras, which are at the peak of pop­u­lar­i­ty in 2022. Among them are both new items and mod­els released a cou­ple of years ago.

What is important to know when choosing a camera

For begin­ners who are just start­ing to get involved in pho­tog­ra­phy, some terms and func­tions may not be clear. In order not to get con­fused in the vari­ety of cam­eras, it is impor­tant to under­stand the basics.

Nikon has sev­er­al series of cam­eras:

• com­pact — with the word Coolpix in the mod­el name;
• mir­ror pro­fes­sion­al — D4, D5, D6;
• semi-pro­fes­sion­al — D750, D850, D780;
• semi-pro­fes­sion­al with Nikon DX sen­sor — D7200, D7500;
• for advanced ama­teurs — D5600;
• entry-lev­el DSLRs — D3500;
• mir­ror­less cam­eras — Nikon Z30.

The cam­eras use dif­fer­ent sen­sors:

• Nikon DX is a type of 24x16mm sen­sor that the com­pa­ny uses in SLR cam­eras;
• APS‑C — found main­ly in SLR cam­eras, but it has also been installed in mir­ror­less cam­eras. Matrix size — 25.1 × 16.7 mm;
• Nikon FX — an obso­lete sen­sor type that match­es the size of a 135–24 type film frame;
• Nikon CX — This sen­sor was devel­oped for mir­ror­less cam­eras.

When choos­ing a cam­era, you need to pay atten­tion to such para­me­ters as:

• matrix — the num­ber of megapix­els and the max­i­mum res­o­lu­tion of images depend on it;
• video record­ing qual­i­ty and num­ber of frames. To cre­ate con­tent today, it is bet­ter to choose cam­eras that shoot in 4K at least at 30 frames per sec­ond, and prefer­ably 60;
• screen diag­o­nal. The larg­er the dis­play, the more con­ve­nient it is to use it — set the set­tings, view the footage;
• ISO range — the qual­i­ty of images in low vis­i­bil­i­ty con­di­tions depends on it. You also need to con­sid­er the ISO range when shoot­ing video — it is usu­al­ly less than for cre­at­ing a pho­to;
• shoot­ing speed — affects the num­ber of frames that the cam­era takes in 1 sec­ond.

Read also:

All about expo­sure: what it is, how to set it up, expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion and brack­et­ing

New mirrorless camera Nikon Z30

The cam­era was equipped with a 20 megapix­el APS‑C type matrix. Togeth­er with the Expeed proces­sor, this leads to a wide range of ISO changes — from 100 to 25600 when shoot­ing video and up to 51200 for pho­tos. This made it opti­mal for vlog­gers and oth­er con­tent mak­ers. The device com­bines a lot of func­tions that are present in the Nikon DX series mod­els, but here the man­u­fac­tur­er has focused on self­ies and video shoot­ing.

In Nikon’s line­up, the Z30 became the third cam­era to fea­ture an APS‑C sen­sor with a pro­pri­etary Z mount. The cam­era has an inter­change­able lens and looks very sim­i­lar to the Z50, but lacks a viewfind­er. Nikon has a wide range of lens­es for any task: stan­dard zooms, uni­ver­sal primes, por­traits, macro lens­es and many oth­ers.

The cam­era has a con­ve­nient swiv­el dis­play. Pho­to: camerajabber.com

The Nikon Z30 shoots at 11 frames per sec­ond with auto focus but no pre­view between shots. If you reduce the speed to 5 frames, Live View will also become avail­able — a func­tion that dis­plays the image and all set­tings on the screen. It is use­ful when it is incon­ve­nient to use the opti­cal viewfind­er. The max­i­mum video record­ing res­o­lu­tion is 3840 x 2160 pix­els at 30 fps. Frame rates up to 60 appear at Full HD (1920 x 1080 pix­els). Also, the cam­era has a built-in elec­tron­ic sta­bi­liza­tion func­tion, there is a slow motion mode — up to 120 frames / s at Full HD.

Of the minus­es is the lack of sta­bi­liza­tion in the body, which forces users to buy lens­es like Nikon VR with a built-in sta­bi­liz­er.

When shoot­ing a video, the lack of a head­phone jack can cause incon­ve­nience — you won’t be able to con­trol the sound at the time of record­ing the video. True, you can rely on the indi­ca­tors on the screen, but they do not detect wind noise or oth­er light back­ground sounds.

Vlog­gers love this cam­era for its Nikon col­or set­tings, detail and expo­sure, and its unmis­tak­able eye detec­tion. All these advan­tages cov­er such weak­ness­es as the lack of built-in sta­bi­liza­tion or a head­phone jack.

Gen­er­al spec­i­fi­ca­tions Nikon Z30:

• matrix 20.8 MP;
• video record­ing in UHD 4K (30 fps;) or Full HD (120 fps;);
• touch screen diag­o­nal — 3”;
• ISO range — from 100 to 51200;
• pho­tog­ra­phy speed — up to 11 frames / s;
• weight of the cam­era with­out lens — 405 g.

Amateur camera Nikon D3500

Mir­ror­less cam­eras are grad­u­al­ly replac­ing DSLRs, but ama­teur cam­eras like the Nikon D3500 are still pop­u­lar among begin­ners. Light­weight cam­era fits com­fort­ably in the hand, equipped with an opti­cal viewfind­er and a good bat­tery. The body with­out lens weighs only 415 grams.

The Nikon D3500 is a great choice for pho­tog­ra­phers who are just learn­ing the basics. The res­o­lu­tion of the matrix of the cam­era is 24 megapix­els — this is a typ­i­cal sen­sor for entry-lev­el APS‑C devices. It pro­vides a fair­ly wide range of ISO — from 100 to 25600.

Shoot­ing video is one of the few weak points of the cam­era. While many mod­ern smart­phones sup­port 4K, the Nikon D3500 is lim­it­ed to Full HD, but the frame rate reach­es 60 frames per sec­ond. All move­ments and move­ments of objects on the video in this case are smooth and clear — with­out sharp jerks and twitch­es.

Also, the man­u­fac­tur­er did not pro­vide a con­nec­tor for an addi­tion­al micro­phone.

In sum­ma­ry, if you need a cam­era for shoot­ing video, it is bet­ter to choose anoth­er one, for exam­ple, the Canon EOS M50 Mark II.

D3500 is a clas­sic ama­teur DSLR from Nikon. Pho­to: pcmag.com

Nikon D3500 main­tains expo­sure well in almost any con­di­tions, exclud­ing over­ex­po­sure of dark objects. Auto white bal­ance han­dles cor­rect­ly even in mixed light­ing.

The 24-megapix­el sen­sor deserves spe­cial atten­tion. It pro­duces pho­tos of high detail, which in qual­i­ty can be com­pared with images from more expen­sive cam­eras. Even at ISO 800, noise is almost invis­i­ble and col­ors remain nat­ur­al. Start­ing at ISO 1600, noise starts show­ing up and detail is lost.

The 18–55mm kit lens is not the best choice even for begin­ners. With it, the frames are blur­ry at the edges. There is a bet­ter option — Nikon AF‑S DX 35 mm f / 1.8G or Tam­ron AF SP 35mm.

Anoth­er use­ful fea­ture that begin­ners use is the Pic­ture Con­trol. It allows you to adjust col­ors and con­trast. There are 7 modes, each of which has an adjust­ment of sat­u­ra­tion, bright­ness.

Nikon D3500 made it to our rat­ing due to its excel­lent price-qual­i­ty ratio. This is one of the best cam­eras for begin­ners who choose DSLRs.

Gen­er­al spec­i­fi­ca­tions Nikon D3500:

• 24.5 MP APS‑C CMOS sen­sor;
• Nikon F type lens mount;
• screen diag­o­nal — 3”;
• con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing speed — 5 frames / s;
• video record­ing — Full HD 1080p;
• cam­era weight with­out lens — 415 g.

Nikon D850 professional camera

When devel­op­ing this cam­era, the man­u­fac­tur­er con­tin­ued the race for megapix­els, which began back in 2012 with the release of the D800 mod­el. Of course, the Nikon D850 cam­era is far from the top-end D5, but it also costs much less. This mod­el was cre­at­ed for pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers and advanced ama­teurs. The cam­er­a’s clos­est com­peti­tor is Canon’s EOS 5D Mark IV, but it falls short in res­o­lu­tion, burst speed and video qual­i­ty.

The Nikon D850 is a good pro­fes­sion­al cam­era that com­petes with the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. Pho­to: ingeniovirtual.com

Nikon D850 was equipped with a brand new sen­sor with a record res­o­lu­tion of 45.7 megapix­els, that is, pho­to res­o­lu­tion reach­es 8256 x 5504. The sen­sor does not have an anti-alias­ing fil­ter, which some­times blurs frames. The qual­i­ty of the shots remains high, and noise in the shad­ows does not appear even at high ISO. The sen­si­tiv­i­ty range is from 64 to 25600 units.

The cam­era pro­duces clean shots at record ISO val­ues ​​— up to 12800. Of course, light nois­es begin to appear at these bor­ders, but when shoot­ing in RAW, they can be over­come pro­gram­mat­i­cal­ly.

This mod­el has many fea­tures that its pre­de­ces­sors lacked: high-speed con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing, fast and accu­rate aut­o­fo­cus, focus shift, and advanced video fea­tures such as slow motion at 120 fps, head­phone and micro­phone out­put, focus peak­ing for more pre­cise man­u­al focus, dif­fer­ent Pic­ture Con­trol pro­files, Time­lapse shoot­ing.

In fact, the Nikon D850 is a ver­sa­tile cam­era suit­able for wed­ding report­ing, evening pho­to shoots and trav­el. Also, the cam­era is now able to shoot video in 4K.

Gen­er­al spec­i­fi­ca­tions Nikon D850:

• 45.7 MP CMOS sen­sor;
• Nikon F type lens mount;
• screen diag­o­nal — 3.2”;
• con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing speed — 9 frames / s;
• video record­ing — 4K up to 30 frames per sec­ond;
• weight of the cam­era with­out lens — 1005 g.

The best compact camera Nikon Coolpix P950

The Coolpix P950 suc­ceed­ed its pre­de­ces­sor P900, offer­ing the same 83x zoom lens, but some fea­tures have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved. For exam­ple, the cam­era learned to shoot 4K video and pho­tos in RAW for­mat, received a mount for a sep­a­rate flash and a con­nec­tor for an exter­nal micro­phone.

Nikon P950 is a ver­sa­tile device that even pro­fes­sion­als use. It is bought in addi­tion to the main cam­era. With this com­pact, you can shoot both col­or­ful land­scapes and celes­tial bod­ies. This cam­era is the best choice when super zoom is need­ed. It allows you to shoot birds and ani­mals from afar or take cool shots from obser­va­tion decks.

The Coolpix P950 has a large lens that pro­vides a record-break­ing 83x zoom. Pho­to: pcmag.com

The cam­era was equipped with a Dynam­ic Fine Zoom sys­tem, which pro­vides dig­i­tal zoom at 166x, albeit with a dete­ri­o­ra­tion in qual­i­ty. The lens also has a Dual Detect Opti­cal Vibra­tion Reduc­tion sys­tem built into it, which makes it eas­i­er to shoot at a large focal length.

The res­o­lu­tion of the sen­sor is 16 megapix­els, and it pro­vides light sen­si­tiv­i­ty from 100 to 6400. The cam­era shoots video in 4K res­o­lu­tion at 30 frames per sec­ond and Full HD at 60 frames.

Gen­er­al char­ac­ter­is­tics of Nikon Coolpix P950:

• 16 MP CMOS sen­sor;
• 83x opti­cal zoom;
• screen diag­o­nal — 3.2” (swiv­el);
• con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing speed — 7 frames / s;
• video record­ing — 4K up to 30 frames per sec­ond;
• cam­era weight — 1005 g.

Results

We looked at the fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent Nikon cam­eras that are pop­u­lar among ama­teur and pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers in 2022. Peo­ple who don’t want a cam­era with inter­change­able lens­es should take a clos­er look at the Coolpix series com­pacts.

For more advanced users, ama­teur DSLRs such as the D3400 or D3500, as well as mir­ror­less cam­eras such as the Nikon Z50 or Nikon Z FC, are suit­able.

Pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers choose advanced cam­eras — Nikon D850, D780, D800.