D90 vs D7000 or D7100

IanC

IanC

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Hi All,

I am off to New Zealand at the end of the year (not that should be a valid excuse to purchase a nee camera, but still......) and will most likely be taking lots of landscape shots and Milky Way/Astro.

Now, I currently own a D90 and I'm not very keen on its low light focusing and iso performance.

How does the D7100 or D7000 (D7200 is out of my price range) perform against it and will I see a good difference in performance?

Many thanks for any advice :)
 
I saw a marginal improvement in the D7000 over a D90. But that was all it was, i.e. not enough to justify a upgrade imo. I'd expect the same going to a D7100 though haven't used one.
 
I've never owned a D7000 but have owned a D90 and D7100.

I only shoot street shots, models, portraits and sports (mainly things that move in any given light) which D7100 was not very good at. I use single point focus in focus release priority so any screw ups should be down to me rather than the camera.

I found the D7100 AF hunted a lot in overcast conditions and wasn't much better at nailing focus than the D90. Yes it has all the bells and whistles 51pt multi cam AF system, but in comparison to other Nikons I've used with same AF system (D300S & D700) the D7100 was the weakest of the lot. I was also hugely disappointed in the ISO performance of the D7100 partly due to the reviews (at the time) lavishing so much praise on the camera's sharpness and higher ISO performance. There's maybe a slight improvement in ISO performance between the D7100 and D90 but it's so minimal you'll hardly notice. Once you go beyond ISO 800 the sharpness level drops big time (same as D90) and the only saving grace with D7100 is it's better dynamic range. Another issue with the D7100 is banding (something D90 doesn't have) and it's overly orange/brown white balance - no matter how much tinkering I made I never got a white balance I was content with.

If you're shooting still subjects then the D7100 AF should be acceptable, but if it's in poor light the banding may become an issue, particularly if you try and lift darks/shadows in pp.

Overall I was underwhelmed by sensor performance and IQ from the D7100 as it wasn't the leap in performance the reviews led me to believe.
 
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Hi All, revitalising this thread as I'm now considering getting a D7200 to replace my D90.

Will I see a good jump in performance for my money? Bearing in mind I mostly shoot landscapes and astro scenes? Or would a wide angle lens be a better investment?

Interested to here as well from those who have made the same switch

Thanks
 
What lenses do you have?

The D7200 is an amazing camera with much better noise control than the D90 but if you don't have a fast and wide lens then milky way shots aren't really going to happen anyway,
 
Get a wide angle lens like a sigma 10-20 3.5 or a samyang 14mm instead and keep the d90
 
Nawty said:
What lenses do you have?

The D7200 is an amazing camera with much better noise control than the D90 but if you don't have a fast and wide lens then milky way shots aren't really going to happen anyway,
Click to expand...

I have a sigma 17-70 2.8-something.

I'm half trying to convince myself that I don't need to spend any money for my trip to new Zealand on cameras, but then this is a big opportunity and I want to have the best possible tools......
 
The d90 is still a very capable body in the right hands! I
 
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