FOCUS ON IMAGING 2013 NEC BIRMINGHAM 3 - 6 MARCH 2013

The D-SLR market just doesn’t stop! It was only a matter of weeks back that we were all very excited at Focus on Imaging about Nikon’s D800 and Canon’s 5D Mk III. Both of those models are up at the very top of the D-SLR sector at £2.5k-£3k and you’d be excused for thinking that’s where you have to be to get the higher levels of image resolution. But no. Now we have from Nikon the new D3200 and it’s a very enticing offering for only a shade over £500 for the body – that’s less than a quarter of the price of a D800. It boasts a 24 megapixel sensor which equates to a frankly massive 6016 x 4000 pixel native resolution. In terms of bang for buck you can’t go bigger for that kind of money. If you then translate these figures to the real world, what you end up with is a £500 camera body capable of producing a native image heading up towards A2-like dimensions at 300ppi.



If you’d thought of this concept a few years ago, we’d have all laughed out loud. Yes, of course, it’s not full frame, the sensor being Nikon’s APS-C, but this is a serious bit of kit despite Nikon’s own ‘consumer’ tag. Also announced at the same time is a clever touch in the form of a mobile adapter that wirelessly connects the D3200 to a smart phone (though oddly it’s only for android phones for now). Of course there’s full HD movie capability now with higher frame rates than the preceding 3100, and the Expeed 3 image processing engine too. Er, and it seems to be also available in red! Seriously, look at it this way, this camera is pretty much twice as capable as the 3100 – progress indeed. Sample images are hosted by Nikon at http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/dslr/d3200/sample.htm where there’s more detail on the specifications. This camera should be available around mid-May in the UK. Nice one, Nikon.