Review: Nikon DF Is A Brilliant New Yet Old DSLR In The Market, But For A Price

Most of us have grown up hearing the adage, ‘old is gold’, but Nikon has not only taken it seriously, the multinational is basking in the glory of vintage wonders. We have seen some retro looking mirrorless cameras from Olympus in the past and it was about time that someone came with a retro DSLR.The designers at Nikon research and development built a full frame camera called DF (Digital Fusion), which is somewhat of a blast from the past.

Design
TajMahal wasn’t built in a day, nor was this beautiful offering from Nikon. It took more than four years to design DF and bring it to the consumers. The look of the camera right out of the groovy 70s and 80s, a time when 35mm reels were a rage and people paid a premium to get colour paper images. One look at the front and top of this DSLR and you know that Nikon has managed to capture the retro look to the tee. With old school dials and a silver ring on the lens,it takes old-world charm and upgrades it with cool features.

Turn the camera around and the vintage gives way to high-tech. The rear has a modern 3.2-inch LCD with all the needed buttons and the dials to preview images, manage internal setting and more. The top dials administer most things such as ISO, shooting modes and shutter release. It does take some amount of time to get accustomed to them, as they are very different from any other recent DSLR. To change modes one has to lift the dial and turn. Similarly, one has to press a button to change exposure and other settings.

The DF is available in two colours black and silver and personally we found the silver one a little better. Also, this colour makes it look more like a camera from yesteryear.

Performance
Now this is a sphere where the DF excels. Yes, the camera does not have video recording, which is kind of a ‘big oops’ from the company. But in their defence, they do want to keep the retro factor alive; this is perhaps why they did not give video functionality here. That said, however, DF is built for performance. With 16.2 mega pixels on board, combined with AF-S 50mm lens, this camera can take bright pictures. A little extra effort was required under the manual mode to get the settings right. But once done the outcome is superb.

We managed to get sharp and vivid images indoors and outdoors. Macro shots were fabulous as well. Low-light was not a problem either. There is no flash on this camera, but ISO made up for it. We cranked the ISO to 3,200 and managed to get noise free images. For flash, users do get the flash shoe on this camera to attach an external flash. DF supports 5 FPS continuous shooting, which works nicely. Due to its weight, at times you do require the tripod to get the perfect shot.

Verdict
We quite liked the camera till we read its price. The Nikon DF with its lens will set you back by Rs 1,99,995. This is a lot to pay for a camera that will demand you to read and memorise the manual first. Even after doing so one ends up rotating the wrong dial!

But if you are one of those who do not mind spending a little extra to look different or rather hold something different with uncompromising image quality, then this is the camera for you.