Are you a Nikon user? Would you be interested in upgrading to the D780? Or you would choose the Z6/7 instead and why?

Getting back into photography after nearly 10 years and seeing all these newer cameras is so interesting. I would love to upgrade my old D300s to a D780. My old friend still going strong though.

Even though I think the Z series is the future for Nikon, I believe that if they would have put the IBIS in the D780 and put the autofocus points from the D5, the D780 would have been Nikon's best DSLR of all times.

One of the best and most fair comparisons between Z and F systems and of course about the D780 available. This video should have more views!

I’m more than happy with my D780!

Excellent work. Thank you. I've wondered about how the image sensors of D750 and D780 would compare at higher ISO settings. I think you nailed it. I also thought your comparison between D780 and Z6 was very informative.

I just upgraded from D750 to D780 :) i'm excited

Have watched a couple of your video's and I like your no rubbish approach. Still searching my options.

I have been watching comparison reviews for D780, and yours by far has the best test.

Richard, this is a fantastic and very thorough comparison. Your visual comparison is very helpful to anyone thinking about the D780, Z6 or D750. Thank you for posting this!

Excellent review! I own both the Z and F mount gear. Both have their place. I purchased the new D780 for long distance travel due to the much superior battery life over my Z6 an Z7. The D780 appears to be a very underrated camera and I hope that it catches on.

Great video, I can see you passion for photography! I better start saving for a D780! Been casually shooting for a year or two, and it's time to upgrade from my d5600. Many thanks Richard!

Best review of this camera l have seen well done Richard. Also great comparison with the D750 and Z6. Didn't know you were an old Nikon shooter BTW. Makes your insights all the more valuable.

Thanks for this. Your breakdown of the iso and exposure was interesting.

This is such a great review. Thank you for providing so much information about your analysis of these three cameras and the two Nikon systems.

Richard, I'm coming to this consideration of D780 vs. Z6. Your video is very helpful. I'm considering switching from Canon, after picking up a Nikon D7500. All the theoretical benefits of mirrorless seem like pluses to me, especially the IBIS and the Z mount's better lenses quality. Except, i still feel drawn to the D780. Decisions decisions!

Just found this video and thank you because you've answered some things I have been trying to find online around the low light capabilities of the D780. I am looking to upgrade from D5600 to a new camera and can't decide and I think this might have answered it for me.

Great review. Thank you for ISO examples. Personally for me it is a torture to shoot with mirrorless cameras. They are just too small. Been there, try it and I have to say I love my DSLR cameras.

Thanks for your video review. I went with the D780 as a work horse camera and I am not disappointed for portrait and product photos. However, I got a Z5 for personal travel and general walkaround. This was a good compromise. However I may sell the Z5 at some point to upgrade to Z6ii, however I will also keep the D780 as I like its handling for professional work. I just like the Z cameras for outdoor travel cameras. Lots of pros have more than one camera.

you just sold me the d780 switching from my d610. Really pleasing to watch your review. Structured but smooth. And really loved the part where you mentioned the old love for DSLRs. Subscribed and liked. Looking forward for more content =)

The extra EVF for the D780 it's the best idea I've heard. It would be a great accessory. Great review Richard!

The best review ever! my only concern about the D780 is the small AF coverage through the optical viewfinder :-(

This was the best review of this camera I've seen so far. It is also the longest review. (: But will all that I feel like the D780 would be a great camera purchase for me. Thank you Mr. Wong.

THANKS VERY MUCH for this tutorial on the D780...I have been using the D750 since it first came out and still happy with it, but am considering moving up to the 780 and keeping my 750 as a backup. Not looking to go mirrorless, but I admit I was looking serious;y at the D850 except for the price! :) Anyway, I appreciate this review! HG from Chicago

Shockingly good. This could easily be a primary pro camera for another 5-10 years, or until smartphones and laptops are all 16K resolution. Great video!

There are inexpensive magnifiers like the Tarion TR-V2 that can attach to your LCD display that essentially turn it into a mirrorless viewfinder. It makes shooting video with my Nikon D750 so much easier. No need to buy a separate (and expensive) monitor or EVF.

El mejor reviews / comparación de todo KZfaq! Muchisimas gracias por hacerlo posible.

Thank you so much for this video. You put in the work to show test shots and side by side sample photo comparison. Excellent production quality and rigor. Other reviewers just rant and not show results, but you went above the crowd.

I have to say, from all the d780 reviews, this is the one that was as most use. I have been a D750 user since 2014 and also a D5 user. I want something in-between as my D750 just can’t give me the clarity at night of the D5, and the D850 is a lot more of a camera, but might not stretch to the night work I do. I hate that it doesn’t have a vertical shutter option, if it did I would have bought it on release, but your video has shown me there is a big reason to upgrade to the 780. And more importantly, there are improvements on the sensor over the Z6. Thank you for your comparison, has helped me make that decision of not opting for a D850 and going for the ‘lesser’ D780. I’ll just have to get used to no vertical shutter option!

Well done! Thanks for the review Richard. One thing I would be interested in is seeing is the difference in handheld and brief walking video between a D780 VR stabilized lens and the Z6 with IBIS. I realize the Z6 will be better but this would be useful to see.

Best real-life D780 review around right now !!

Glad I waited...almost got the D750...2014??? Nah...Ill pass..get the D780! Great review!! Thanks for sharing!!!

Thank you for a very good review!

Great video! Exactly what I was looking for! That being said I would have loved some ISO comparisons at 3200 and 6400 as those tend to be the highest I ever shoot with. Thank you though!

Rock solid review. Great work Richard!

Hi, I have a Nikon D700 which I really love. I was thinking to upgrade to Nikon D850, then I changed my mind to Nikon D780 thinking it may have better autofocus on video than D850. Which doesn't happen. Both D850 and D780 have medium autofocus on video. Reading more carefully reviews on D750 and also listening a friend of mine opinion on D750, I finally decided to get a D750. I know it may be a risk with the shutter, but I am an optimistic person.

Hey im user of Nikon D750.

exactly what i needed to see. thank you! :)

Nice detail review, i would still wait for another z mirrorless camera., still happy with D750.

Awesome comparison. Can you also do 780 vs z6 ii?

Fantastic and very thorough and informative! 👍👍👍👍👏🏻😁✌🏻📷

Richard, that was an excellent piece of work. The ISO comparisons, noise, color shifts, etc. Very nice illustration with photographs. I noticed with a compliment from another viewer in their comment, you asked if you did something wrong. I guess in his country, as in mine, if you do something wrong, we just explicitly point to that. So, the compliment I started with is sincere and intended the way I put it. I can even thank you for saying ISO (eyeso and not I ass oh) or neekon instead of nycon and Zed Six instead of Zee Six) and you and I know that Nikon people visiting the USA, would mispronounce all these things, in order to stay polite to a foreigner. So let me add a contrasting piece of criticism. I don't like how you talk about sensors, as if they are very important. They are not. Look (Google) for a data logging digital thermometer for laboratory purposes. Say a Fluke 54 IIB. Now look for a matching thermocouple. The thermocouple comes in different flavors that determine temperature range, have a bit of impact on precision. Basically, the thermocouple (TC) is a piece of wire with a resistor at its end and this is a special thing in that its resistance varies with temperature. It may be optionally shielded and may optionally have a ferrite noise suppression. The big device presents the TC with a reference voltage that is precisely controlled and meters any change in resistance. The TC is analog, by the way. That resistance is analyzed in an section in the big box called Analog to Digital conversion. (AD conversion.) And the AD conversion's precision determines how many bits precision are used to determine temperature. That number of bits is not a TC quality but a quality of the big box. If it does reference voltage and resistance metering good, irrespective of temperature and the level of the battery, then this meter works very well. Now a digital camera. The sensor is like the TC. Just the difference is that it has 24 million resistors and these are not sensitive to temperature but to the level of light. Sensitive to means that it changes its resistance. As you can order TC for different temperature ranges and with different options, the same applies to sensors - this impacts ISO and dynamic range. The big Fluke box that takes care of one cell compares with the rest of the camera that takes care of the 24 million photovoltaic cells (PVC) in the sensor. In the way the Fluke box measures temperature in this single thing constantly, the camera scans the light level for each PVC in sequence. This means there is a difference in time between the first and the last PVC being metered. Which means, when you shoot a photo in an environment with a flickering light source, you can get brightness differences between first and last pixel, or a zone of the image, dependent on how fast the on/off rises and falls in the flickering. Higher MP cameras don't scan the entire sensor in one go, but run parallel PVC measurement sequences. Or, the 24MP sensor is treated as one band when the higher MP sensor are treated as several bands. And the difference in moment in time the first PVC is read from the last is called "time parallax". And note that the focal plain shutter already had time parallax, and so we can assume that the camera's computer that measures PVC must stay in sync with the focal plane shutter's opening rolling along the sensor. The camera must present a reference voltage that is consistent from the first to the last PVC measured, or else we are helixed. Note we have no pixels. A pixel has an R, G and B value and our PVC are monochrome. Each PVC (also called photosite) has a monochrome filter on top: red, green or blue. These color filters over the PVC are arranged in a regular grid, invented by Mr. Bayer. So the camera has measured all the PVC and buffered the light level for each. But these are monochrome light levels. The camera "knows" that the first cell on the first line has a red filter, and the second a green filter and that 6,000 PVC farther on the next line, the first PVC has a green filter and the second a red one. At some point, a program starts to compare light levels from the surrounding PVC in order to GUESStimate the missing green and blue values for that cell at the first coordinate. This is now repeated 24 million times. In this process, fine regular color patterns in the subject may cause strange color patterns, called Moiré, that remind of Newton rings in old color film transparencies mounted in glass frames (also called slides). Such Moiré patterns must be prevented in the first process, or removed in a second assessment of the data. The removal is called demosaicing or de-Bayerization. In some cameras, somewhere in the process, the data are reviewed for the presence of lens flaws and this leads to corrections again. When this is all done, the result is written as a raw file. For a JPEG file, the raw data are reviewed again by a program that does data compression. Here, the color profiles are applied that had been chosen with the photograph. This compression is not as simple as creating a Zip file. The camera may have been set to measure PVC resistance at 14 bits precision, but JPEGs can only have 8 bits per color channel in each pixel. So, two things need to happen: reduction in pixel depth and data compression of details in blobs in the picture. How is "sensor" relevant here? How is "the same sensor" relevant here? Between 0% and 5% relevant. What is relevant is first the hardware between the sensor and the raw file. More space and less weight constraints give more potential to build more robust reference voltage circuits and measurement circuits. Then second a determining factor is the firmware that helps to convert measurements to digital and invent pixels. One thing about generations of sensors. Older sensors have discrete AD conversion. This means the sensor is just an array of PVC with connections for the camera's mainboard. At some point a manufacturer started to integrate an AD conversion circuit on the sensor. My perception is that these newer AD-integrated sensors are all limited to 14 bits pixel depth. This means a company like Hasselblad must have an older sensor design that requires a discrete AD stage. Now don't feel embarrassed. The clever writers of the Nikon manuals make the same mistake and most reviewers in the interweb don't have a clue either. The people at Nikon who know this do not like to talk about the sensor as they buy them and don't make these themselves. If you have to explain it, they may think, it will start to live a life of its own and it may hurt us. The clever manufacturer of the sensor chips who also makes cameras now does not talk about it either because the ignorance builds their reputation as gurus of digital photography. In your case, I thought, I'd explain it to you as you do a very good job. [oh, a helix is a screw.]

Fantastic review. Subscribed.

I would love to see an adapter for Z-mount that has a screw AF motor built in so we could have full use of AF-D lenses on mirrorless.

It helped me to select D780.

I think you made this video for me. I've been trying hard to decide. Excellent comparison - you obviously know the cameras, the first really useful info I've found on the subject. I hope you don't mind, I posted a link to your video (on the Nikon D780 Facebook group).

Thanks James for such detailed comparison. One thing I’m curious about the noise D780 would make under video/live view mode. The 2 of the VR lenses are 24-120G f4 VR & 70-200g F4 VR. And 24-120g makes a lot of noise with d750 when recording video.

With the D780 you can change the aperture settings in live view?

D810 is working perfectly fine still after year's.

Hello. what do you think about buying a nikon d780 with a tamron 24-70 2.8 g2? I was thinking about z6 but I'm not entirely convinced

The Nikon D750 and Nikon D780 are both on my shopping list. The Nikon D750 first as it is alot cheaper and in like a year and a half time the Nikon D780 will be cheaper also. The Nikon Z6 I will get later down the line when XQD cards are more available

Thank you for the great review. I have a d7000 and my telephoto lens broke, AF mode, so I’m looking on upgrading my equipment. I originally looked at the d750, but when I found out that it came out in 2014 I veered away from old technology. I’m leaning toward the d780, because I have 2 VR DX lens that will work. And with this video, you answered my questions about older lens that can fit this camera. Also when the service department opens I’ll have to get my telephoto lens repaired. (55-300mm) Enjoyed this vid keep them coming

If i remember correctly my D200 had the battery grip that used the Battery holder to opporate camera

D780 vs D750 much darker look at the black and silver like they boosted the contrast

The buffer on the Z6 is actually pretty small. I have the slower version XQD card from Sony (150MB/s) and I only get about 15 RAW+JPG images before I fill the buffer. The results that you are getting may be because of using the faster cards.

Excellent video. Thank you.

D780 for me. DSLR’s for life!

Ola amigo, gostei demais da sua explicação, sou do Brasil... e estava muito na duvida D780 ou Z6, e agora vendo sua explicação, decido ir para a D780. Tenho muitas lentes, e não faz sentido sair da DSLR agora. Obrigado

Would you see the Z6 is enough for tracking the kids

Regarding the buffer on continuos shooting; did you have the correct UHS-ll cards in place? Mine hasn't had any problems...

With firmware 2.0, you should get much more than 5.5 fps on the Z6 with autofocus and AE.

I have a Z6 and I hope to sell it soon cause I want to pass to D780. The Z6 is ok but Z lenses inmy opinion are just trash

Thank you so much for this review ! What would you chose in terms of low light ability between the D780 and the D4s ? I like the D850 but 45MP is too much for me especially this high MP sensor is not optimized to shoot video

D810 user here. As far as dslr you feel the 780 is better than the 850? I want the D850 next & maybe the Z6 film makers kit & later with the 24-70 2.8 s lens dded in also. If my tax bracket was higher I would wait for Nikon to come out with S line widlife tely for their mirrorless & make the switch. Great comparison vid.

Excellent review. Thank you

Great video ...

Thank you .. its a great review ..

Which one would suit the best for Real Estate and which lens would suit it

I own a d750 but I m not happy with video. Is video AF of d780 and Z6 much more beter? I want to upgrade but i m indecide For video and stills, portret, landscapesand street life witch one is beter?

Man I love that Baby Ackbar shirt!

We have the FTZ adapter, why not create a ZTF adapter? That way the D780 being that it has the same guts as the Z6, it can use Every Nikkor lens from the AI, AI-S, E, G, AF-D to the Z lenses. That would also make for the Ultimate Nikon DSLR of the future.

Thanks for this helpful review. Has the D780 surpassed the D850? If so, why is it not called the D870?

I have a bunch of recent and "old" Nikkor lenses... No need for me to go to mirrorless and spend a lot of money rebuying lenses (yes, I know there is an adapter but is not the same thing)

I am using z6 for the last 1 year. Its image quality beyond 3200 is bad. As per your review d780 is much better. Although, dpreview shows z6 & 780 has almost equivalent image quality. Pls check.

Is the D780 still relevant, given that the Z6 II with firmware 1.10 would have overcome a lot of the focusing issues with Z6? Also, is D780 due for any upgrade anytime soon? I want to upgrade from D750 but cannot get myself to give up the OVF.

Does the d780 have a low pass filter?

I have the D750 and I think I would upgrade to the d780 unless another Dxxx comes out. I don’t need the 45 megapixels of a D850, and not sure about the Z6, I have a lot of F glass and don’t shoot video, so probably not a Z?

All the D780 needed was a battery grip option, then it would have been a “legend.” Which is, a D750 replacement.

Does the mirror go down each shot when taking D780 LV photos like the D750? Are there LV option for mechanical or electronic shutter?

i have 6 lens F mount, i want shot wedding video this year for hobby, so should i sell d750 and i get or keep, and buy D780 or z6ii and sell all my favorite F lens :( i'm confius right now

I was very excited about this camera until I realised it doesn't backup video. Plus one review said the rear screen wasn't very good in bright light almost unusable.

Didn't have time to watch the full review. How do low light pictures compare between the D780 and Z6?

Although all the advantages of live view on the D780 mean that you need to hold your DSLR like a phone...

Is there a difference between the D780 and the D750 at 100iso?

Hi Richard. Great review. I got the camera on day one of launch and agree completely with your review. Just a quick question. How are you able to process and show the RAW files, since LR still does not support the new NEF files. Would appreciate your guidance on this. Tq.

does it have WYSIWYG from live view ?

d780 or 850? Mr. Wong, what do you think?

780. And 6 years later: z6 mark 3

No connector for a full functional vertical grip? Pretty poor. Who makes such crappy decisions? 1o years ago the D700 was the back up camera for the pro bodies D3 and D3x. But the D780 with such development mistakes is far beyond from that.

KZfaqrs getting kickback to make consumers switch to mirrorless…. Lol. Everything is going to have a limitation, to include mirrorless.

Great review, Could you advise how is d780 compare to Z6 for sports?

you are paid from Nikon so that we buy the new mirrorless cameras, tha are not so good as the old dslr

give the RAW files. Because dpreview.com has different results

What are advantages of 780 over z6?

Why is the comparison based on jpg? wtf

D780 should cost $1400 to 1600 out the gate. It's old out the door tech. They are not fooling me with this crap. Buy a used D750 if you are still hanging on to Nikon.

Jpeg on a $2000+ camera? 😬

This guy blinks everytime he talks.

D780 is a great camera, but most people don't like the product naming with 3 digit numbers, which is often perceived as a budget model.

DSLR is a dying breed ... no need to consider ....