Introduction

Ease of Use

Like the 18-month old D3100, the new Nikon D3200 is a rather small DSLR camera, although it does come with a chunky right-hand grip that makes it better suited to hand-held shooting than some of its competitors. Still, expect having to find a place for your little finger under the camera if you have larger-than-average hands. The camera body itself is mainly plastic, but while the D3200 certainly doesn't feel as robust as some of the company's higher specified models, it still exudes a degree of quality you might not expect at this price point. This is helped by the surprisingly classy rubber coating on the grip, which also appears on the thumb rest on the back of the camera.

The Nikon D3200's body is almost identical to its predecessor in terms of the overall dimensions and weight, with most external controls in the same places as before. Notable changes to the outside of the camera include the inclusion of an infrared remote sensor in the grip and rear of the D3200, which now accepts both an infrared release and a wired remote release cable, and the use of a simple button to take you to Live View mode rather than the D3100's more fiddly spring-loaded lever. There's also the unwelcome removal of the D3100's drive-mode lever at the top, which we loved because it made setting and checking the current drive mode very easy and straightforward, and the logical relocation of the small red button that acts as a movie shutter release, enabling one-touch video recording when you are in Live View, from the rear to the top of the camera next to the main shutter release button.

The 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 VR kit lens that Nikon supplied feels fairly well-balanced - if a tad front-heavy - on the Nikon D3200 and it fits into place with a reassuring mechanical click. It also adds the very important advantage of Vibration Reduction. Nikon bodies don't offer any form of in-camera image stabilisation, unlike similar models from Sony, Pentax and Olympus, so the affordable 18-55mm VR lens is a good partner for the D3200.

Front	Rear

The Nikon D3200 follows conventional DSLR design in having a shooting mode dial on the top of the camera, which allows you to select either one of the advanced modes like Manual, Aperture- or Shutter-priority, or a number of scene modes.

The Guide mode first seen in the D3000 has also been carried over, and enhanced to include sample images to help you to identify the shot. Also new options have been added to the Advanced operation menu, for example to help you to reduce blur or soften backgrounds. The main purpose of the Guide mode remains the same as on the D3000 and D3100, namely to teach beginners about what settings to use in a number of shooting situations, and how these settings influence the final output. We feel that Nikon deserves kudos for this, as a mode like this can teach beginners a lot more about the basics of photography than the green Auto mode in which the camera assumes control of almost everything.

The Exposure Compensation button is thoughtfully positioned next to the shutter release. Hold down this button with your right forefinger and spin the control wheel on the top-rear of the camera with your thumb to adjust its settings - simple and intuitive. In M mode, this easy-to-reach button allows you to toggle between aperture and shutter speed settings, making the lack of a second control wheel less problematic.

Front	Top

The second button sitting next to the shutter release, labelled 'info', is arguably at the heart of the Nikon D3200's ease-of-use, as the camera lacks the monochromatic status LCD of more expensive models like the D7000, so Nikon had to provide a different way to check vital shooting information without having to look into the viewfinder. Enter the info button - pressing it displays virtually all of the camera's main settings on the large, high resolution rear screen.

The same screen is used for the D3200's Live View and movie recording modes. As noted above, the Nikon D3200 has a small button on the back which makes entering Live View a very easy and simple affair. In Live View the camera autofocuses using the contrast detect method. Depending on the AF mode set, you can either initiate this via a half-press of the shutter release, or have the camera keep focusing continuously. The first method is noticeably faster than on earlier models, though still not nearly as quick as the phase detection method used outside Live View. The other autofocus mode, called full-time AF, can be more of an annoyance than a benefit, as the picture might go out of focus just before you wanted to take a shot (though you can at least lock focus by half-pressing the shutter release when you think focus is where it should be).

Of course you can also focus manually while in Live View mode. As with earlier LV-enabled models, it is possible to magnify into the live image by repeatedly pressing the button labelled with a loupe icon - however, due to what appears to be a lo-res live view feed, this magnification is not much help. On a related note, it's also annoying that Nikon still doesn't offer a live histogram to help you get the exposure right when working in Live View mode.

Pop-up Flash	Side

The Nikon D3200 features a 1080p Full HD “D-movie” mode. At the highest resolution setting, the camera can record movies at cine standard 24fps, while at 1280x720 pixels you can choose from 24, 25 or 30 frames per second. The Nikon D3200 offers full-time autofocus in movie mode, but you may quickly decide to turn this feature off. For one thing, the sound of the focus motor in the lens gets picked up by the microphone. For another, the subject may go out of focus for no apparent reason. If you really want to make sure an erratically moving subject stays sharp throughout the clip, you had better stop down the lens for enough depth of field to work with, and leave all shallow-depth-of-field trickery to static or predictably moving subjects.

With the Nikon D3200, there is now an element of exposure control when shooting movies. Both the aperture and the shutter speed can be pre-set before you start filming and changed whilst shooting, a welcome boon to your creativity. By default, exposure changes with subject luminance while capturing a clip, although you can at least lock exposure by holding down the AE Lock button. The camera does not provide any special feedback on focus or highlight blow-out (i.e. no “peaking” or “zebras” like in professional video cameras), but there is now manual control over audio levels and sound is recorded by way of the built-in stereo microphone. You can also hook the D3200 up an optional external stereo mic to improve the audio quality. Videos are compressed using the H.264 codec and stored in a MOV container. Movie quality is, thankfully, good with excellent resolution and good dynamic range, although your footage may suffer from various “rolling shutter” effects when doing quick pans or shooting hand-held with a telephoto lens.

Like all SLRs, the D3200 has a proper through-the-lens optical viewfinder. It's not as large as that of a D7000, for example, but you wouldn't expect it to be at this price point anyway. The positions of the 11 autofocus sensors are permanently but unobtrusively marked on the focusing screen with 11 tiny dots. In single-point AF mode - in which you can specify which AF point the camera should use - the active autofocus point lights up in red upon a half-press of the shutter release. The other available AF area modes include Auto Area, Dynamic Area and 3D Tracking. Autofocus speeds with the kit zoom weren't stellar, but focusing with the optical viewfinder was still a lot faster than in Live View mode. Focus accuracy left a bit to be desired, especially when using one of the off-centre focus points (AF point selection is done by way of the four-way pad, a simple and intuitive solution.)

Memory Card Slot	Battery Compartment

Just like most other entry-level Nikon dSLRs, the Nikon D3200 lacks a body-integral focus motor, so it can only autofocus with AF-S and AF-I lenses which have the AF motor built in. Other AF Nikkors can be used in manual-focus mode only, although the AF sensors remain active and can at least provide focus confirmation via the green dot in the in-finder LCD. There is also an “electronic rangefinder” function that can be enabled via the menu; this tells you how far you are from perfect focus, and which way you need to rotate the focus ring to acquire it. Manual-focus AI and AI-s lenses without a CPU can only be used in M mode, and the camera will refuse to provide any form of metering, so you will either have to use an external meter or take a few test shots to determine the optimal exposure. Focus confirmation, however, works with these lenses too, via the green dot; albeit the afore-mentioned “electronic rangefinder” functionality is disabled. One interesting thing we found is that if you shoot a D-movie using a non-CPU lens, the camera will adjust exposure normally, so the lack of metering only applies to stills.

For the images already captured, the Nikon D3200 offers a broad range of retouching tools, including post-capture D-lighting (useful if you forgot to turn on Active D-lighting before capture), red-eye correction, trimming, monochrome conversion, different filter effects, colour balancing, image resizing, image overlay, in-camera raw processing,  distortion correction, and a miniature effect that mimics a look that can otherwise only be achieved with a tilt lens. Many of these functions make it unnecessary to buy specialised computer programs or plug-ins and spend hours in front of a computer to achieve a desired/popular effect.

The Nikon D3200 is powered by a proprietary Lithium-ion battery and ships with a cordless charger that plugs directly into a mains socket. For storage, the camera uses SD, SDHC and SDXC memory cards. As far as connectivity goes, there are A/V Out, mini HDMI and USB terminals, a proprietary connector for an optional cable release or GPS unit, and the already mentioned external microphone socket.

This concludes our evaluation of the Nikon D3200's ergonomics, handling and features. Let's now move on to that all-important aspect of a digital SLR camera - image quality.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 24 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 9Mb.

The Nikon D3200 produced images of excellent quality during the review period. The settings of ISO 100 through ISO 400 are as good as indistinguishable from each other. The slightest hint of noise starts to creep in at ISO 800 but the images are still very clean at that setting. ISO 1600 and ISO 3200 show progressively more noise, but both are eminently usable, even for very large prints. By ISO 6400 and the fastest setting of 12800 the JPEGs are already full of chroma noise but the raw files only show some finely grained luminance noise that allows even the ISO 1,800 setting to produce printable results. The out-of-camera JPEGs are soft at the default settings, but switch to raw image capture, and you'll see just how much detail the 24 megapixel sensor can record. The night photograph was excellent, while red-eye was not a common occurrence with the useful built-in flash. Active D-Lighting helps to salvage some extra detail in the shadow and highlights areas of high-contrast images.

Noise

The standard sensitivity settings on the Nikon D3200 range from ISO 100 to ISO 6400, with an expanded (boosted) setting of ISO 12800 also available. The following 100% crops show the noise levels for each setting. The raw files have been converted with Adobe Camera Raw.

JPEG	RAW
ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 100 (100% Crop)
ISO 200 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 400 (100% Crop)
ISO 800 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 1600 (100% Crop)
ISO 3200 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)
ISO 6400 (100% Crop)	ISO 6400 (100% Crop)
ISO 12800 (100% Crop)	ISO 12800 (100% Crop)

File Quality

The file quality settings available on the Nikon D3200 are Basic, Normal and Fine for JPEGs, with raw capture also at your disposal. The following crops demonstrate the differences in quality.

Fine (9.58Mb) (100% Crop)	Normal (6.96Mb) (100% Crop)
Basic (2.29Mb) (100% Crop)	RAW (20.2Mb) (100% Crop)

Sharpening

The out-of-camera JPEGs are soft at the default settings, and benefit from further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop. Here are a couple of 100% crops - the right-hand images have had some sharpening applied. You can also change the in-camera sharpening level by altering the Picture Controls if you don't like the default look.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

Flash

The flash settings on the Nikon D3200 are Auto, Auto with red-eye reduction, Fill-flash, Auto slow sync, Auto slow sync with red-eye correction, and Rear curtain with slow sync. These shots of a white coloured ceiling were taken at a distance of 1.5m.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (27mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (27mm)
Flash Off - Telephoto (82.5mm)	Flash On - Telephoto (82.5mm)

And here are some portrait shots. As you can see, neither the Flash On or the Red-eye-Reduction settings caused any noticeable red-eye.

Flash On	Flash On (100% Crop)
Red-eye Reduction	Red-eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The Nikon D3200 lets you dial in shutter speeds of up to 30 seconds and has a Bulb mode as well for exposure times of practically any length, which is very good news if you are seriously interested in night photography. There is an optional long-exposure noise reduction function that can be activated to filter out any hot pixels that may appear when extremely slow shutter speeds are used. Do note that this works by way of dark frame subtraction, which effectively doubles the exposure time. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 25 seconds at ISO 100. We've included a 100% crop for you to see what the quality is like.

Night Shot	Night Shot (100% Crop)

Active D-Lighting

Active D-Lighting increases the detail in the shadow and highlight areas of high-contrast images.

Off	On

Picture Controls

Nikon’s Picture Controls are akin to Canon’s Picture Styles in being preset combinations of sharpening, contrast, brightness, saturation and hue. The available choices are Standard, Neutral, Vivid, Monochrome, Portrait and Landscape. The following examples demonstrate the differences across these options.

Standard	Neutral
Vivid	Monochrome
Portrait	Landscape

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Nikon D3200 camera, which were all taken using the 24.2 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Nikon D3200 enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Nikon RAW (NEF) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movie & Video

Product Images

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera / Pop-up Flash

Isometric View

Isometric View

Isometric View

Isometric View

Rear of the Camera

Rear of the Camera / Image Displayed

Rear of the Camera / Info Screen

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

Rear of the Camera / Live View

Top of the Camera

Bottom of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Memory Card Slot

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

With its huge 24 megapixel sensor, the entry-level D3200 instantly becomes the highest-resolution APS-C DX format Nikon DSLR, and it offers more pixels than any competing manufacturer too. Compared to the 18-month-old D3100, Nikon has managed to simultaneously increase the pixel count by a massive 10 megapixels and yet still maintain similar quality at higher sensitivity settings, which is no mean feat. An improved movie mode with greater control over exposure and sound, an expanded Guide mode and simpler controls for beginners, more connectivity options and a better LCD screen all add up to the best entry-level Nikon DSLR that we've ever reviewed.

There are still a few notable bug-bears. Live View mode desperately needs a live histogram and a higher-resolution live feed, while the much-improved movie mode would still benefit from a truly working full-time AF feature. We also missed the D3100's ingenious drive mode lever, while the lack of auto-exposure bracketing options and depth-of-field preview are still a little baffling, despite the D3200's entry-level status.

The Nikon D3200's bigger sensor and other improvements have also somewhat inevitably pushed the price up - £559.99 / €667.00 body only is a lot of money for an entry-level product, so take a look at the still available and much cheaper D3100 model if price is a real issue. Otherwise we can highly recommend the new Nikon D3200 as a great camera for beginners who want a little more oomph from their DLSR, and who are prepared to spend a little extra to get it.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4
Features	4.5
Ease-of-use	4.5
Image quality	4.5
Value for money	4

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Nikon D3200 from around the web.

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