Nikon D610 Has Same Live View Aperture Problem as D600

A little over a year after Nikon released the D600, the brand’s attempt at inexpensive full-frame DSLR, it quietly announced it’s replacement: the Nikon D610. Though Nikon won’t formally admit it, the main reason for the new model was to fix an issue with dust spots/oil spots on the sensor caused by the shutter mechanism. It rolled out some other very small tweaks, but it did not include the ability to change the aperture while in live view – a known problem for anyone trying to shoot continuous video under changing lighting conditions.

The announcement of the Nikon D610 was quiet, the roll-out was even quieter, and perhaps the quietest of all was the discontinuation of the D600. Heck, even the D7000 isn’t discontinued and it’s been out for years and it’s replacement, the Nikon D7100, has been out much longer than the D610 has. This goes to show that it was a replacement to deal with a problem, rather than just a new upgraded model.

What’s new – 610 vs 600

The Nikon D610 has three new features. First, instead of 5.5 FPS the 610 will shoot 6 FPS. It will also have “quiet continuous” option. Both of these new features are part of the upgraded shutter mechanism, which had to be redesigned because of the dust/oil accumulation issue that had been plaguing Nikon since the D600 debuted. The last upgraded feature is improved auto white balancing.

Conclusion

The Nikon D610 is a great camera, but we’d love to see a budget full-frame camera that had some aperture control that more expensive bodies like the Nikon D800 have. While the D800 is great for video, it’s price tag makes it a difficult leap into the full-frame DSLR video production world if the end user isn’t interested in all the still-photo capabilities that come along with that body.