The Nikon D750 has been a venerable and affordable mid-range choice for intermediate photographers for over 6 years, and many photographers have built the foundations of their careers on it, especially in the event and wedding photography industry. But how does it compare to today’s modern options, and is it still worth buying?

In this article we will concentrate on the autofocus, image quality, and video features of the Nikon D750, three areas of interest important to growing photographers in 2021.

Autofocus

Autofocus technology has developed in leaps and bounds since the Nikon D750 was released in 2014. With the advent of mirrorless cameras, photographers now enjoy fast autofocus from the image sensor itself, instead of a separate autofocus sensor requiring calibration and prone to front- or back-focusing, as in the D750. While the D750 can use the image sensor for autofocus in Live View, it is slow to acquire focus and can lose focus in continuous tracking autofocus in Live View.

In addition, eye autofocus has revolutionized portrait photography in the last few years. With the ability to focus reliably on the iris, you can now shoot with more confidence at wide-open apertures, once a chancy proposition with DSLR cameras like the D750. 

When combined with autofocus points covering 90% or more of the sensor in most recent mirrorless cameras, it has nearly eliminated the “focus-and-recompose” method of composition. This method compensates for the relatively small area that autofocus points cover in the viewfinder, but can cause the subject to blur as they leave the focus field.

But don’t count out the autofocus on the D750; it has the same autofocus system as the Nikon D4. And with Nikon’s formidable 3D tracking feature, the D750 still provides fast and accurate focusing within the range of its focus points. 

Overall, while not as flexible as Nikon’s mirrorless AF options, the Nikon D750’s AF is often more reliable and provides excellent results. 

Image Quality

The Nikon D750 really shines when it comes to image quality – even the excellent photos from the Nikon Z 6II don’t show hugely significant improvement in noise performance or color rendition, although pixel peeping will reveal subtle differences.

The D750 was released after the first megapixel wars, where digital photos were still trying to catch up to film in image quality, and Nikon had by that time developed their own pleasing and natural color science for in-camera JPGs, as well as creating a solid foundation for raw photos. The D750 married that color science with an ISO-invariant sensor that still competes today in terms of low-light noise performance. 

The true difference in image quality you may see from the Nikon D750 versus a more modern camera may have less to do with the camera body and more to do with the modern lenses associated with mirrorless camera bodies. In particular, the Canon RF-mount and Nikon Z-mount lenses have built a reputation for exceptional sharpness and image quality, while many of Nikon’s F-mount lenses have been designed over the past 60 years when tolerance for sharpness has varied over time. Many F-mount lenses are excellent, some are not (especially older third-party lenses), but there are few, if any, RF or Z lenses that are not excellent. That may begin to change over time as third-party manufacturers reverse engineer those mounts and manufacture their own designs. 

The takeaway on the D750’s image quality versus recent cameras: it competes quite closely to newer bodies, as long as you are careful to mount quality glass in front of it. 

Video Features

The Nikon D750 was introduced in 2014 as a multimedia creation tool with some respectable video features at the time: 1080p at 24, 30, and 60 frames per second, truly pleasing image quality as you’d expect from its still images, and continuous autofocus for video. While not mind-blowing at the time, it was enough to keep up, but in 2021 it falls short.

Certainly the D750’s biggest weakness in video is not lack of 4k or higher frame rates, but its autofocus. It doesn’t always detect when the subject has moved out of focus. When it does try to refocus, it hunts back and forth to decide where the edges are sharpest before settling down again, but even then it often chooses to focus on the background or an object in the foreground; sometimes it gives up and focuses on nothing at all. It’s best to switch to manual focus for video on the Nikon D750 or use single-shot autofocus after you’ve finalized your framing and distance to subject. 

The second biggest weakness in the Nikon D750’s video package is lack of 120 frames per second for slow motion video. Often 60 fps is enough for B roll purposes, but 120 fps provides for smoother motion and compensates even better for shake during handheld shots. You can certainly stabilize footage in post, but it will crop your shot in and sometimes introduce unpleasant wobbles and jiggles, not typically a desirable effect for achieving a cinematic look. 

Finally, I place the Nikon D750’s lack of 4k recording as the third weakness (and not the second)  because even today, 4k is not universally necessary for video production. It’s definitely a useful option, if only to crop in on a 1080 timeline, but even many commercial clients continue to prefer 1080p delivery over 4k. Ariel Martinez of the iFilmmaker podcast and a commercial video producer in Miami dedicated an entire episode speaking to this issue. In addition, many displays in use today still aren’t 4k resolution, or are so small that 4k versus 1080 versus even 720 is difficult to distinguish. 

One point in the Nikon D750’s defense in video: it really does carry over the beautifully natural image quality built into the stills side of the camera to the video side. That quality still competes today – as long as you don’t push the colors and the tones too far. It records an 8-bit file, and recording externally does not give any improvement to bit depth, so you certainly want to get the picture as close to correct in-camera as possible.

Should I buy the Nikon D750 in 2021?

If you’re looking for a full-frame photography camera on a budget and you want a lot of options for affordable lenses, then the Nikon D750 is one of the best options available in 2021. Even as I write this, B&H is completely out of stock of the D750, both new and used. Even though the video options aren’t as good as newer camera bodies, I’m still successfully producing my own videos with it, and I absolutely love the photos coming out of it. 

If you want more of the modern bells and whistles, or if you want good video options, then you may be interested in other options. For example, the Nikon Z 5 offers 4k recording (with a 1.7x crop) up to 30 fps and 1080 up to 60 fps, along with continuous eye autofocus and in-body image stabilization to reduce handheld camera shake, all for $100 less than the Nikon D750. You still wouldn’t get the best video specs available today and there aren’t nearly as many Z-mount lenses as F-mount, but it’s an affordable modern camera in the same price category. 

So, do you lean more towards taking photos, or video? That’s likely to be the largest factor for you when deciding whether or not to buy the Nikon D750 in 2021.