Nikon D7200

Controls and handling

The D7200's controls are a gentle evolution of those on previous mid-to-high-end DSLRs. The control's twin dials are primarily used for setting exposure; by default controlling aperture (front dial) and shutter speed (rear dial). In the A and S modes, where one of the dials is unused, this can either be used to control Exposure Compensation (Setup menu option b3) or ISO (Setup menu option d8).



Beyond this, the dials are used extensively with the camera's buttons, allowing fast access to a wealth of key features. The White Balance, Qual and ISO buttons on the left rear of the camera, along with the AF, BKT and Flash buttons on the front both combine with the two dials to give access to key features and fine tuning of those features' settings.

	The White Balance, Quality and ISO buttons on the rear left the camera all offer dual functions in conjunction with the two command dials. For example, hold the WB button and the rear dial cycles through the camera's presets. Alternatively, the front dial applies Blue-Amber fine adjustment to the present.
	Likewise the flash release button, Bracketed Exposure button (BKT) and the AF mode button (at the center of the AF/M switch at the bottom of this image), all offer control over two parameters in combination with the dials.
	The Pv and Fn buttons on the front of the camera can be customized. These options include simple on/off toggle settings and more complex settings (such as Active D-Lighting) that require button+dial control.

Additionally, the two buttons on the gripward side of the lens can be customized to access functions that are configured using the dials, such as Active D-Lighting (where you'd want to specify an intensity, rather than just turning the function on and off).

The D7200 has a top plate LCD panel but it only displays a fairly basic set of camera settings. The settings included are: Shutter Speed, Aperture, Exposure Compensation/metering, ISO setting, active card slot, battery life and buffer/shots remaining.

The camera's shoulder LCD panel isn't as detailed as on Nikon's top-end camera, so you don't get to see settings such as White Balance. However the camera offers a more complete display of camera settings on its rear LCD

	The rear LCD shows much more information about the camera's status. The top half of the display broadly mimics the top plate LCD panel. The lower half provides information about a broader range of key shooting settings.

On top of this, all the button+dial combinations invoke on-screen indications of the changes they'll offer, as well as showing the changes being made.

	The status panel isn't interactive in the sense of being able to navigate around it to change settings. However, hold a button that changes one of the displayed settings and the screen will highlight the setting and show the effect of turning either dial. If this setting is usually displayed in the top half of the screen, the lower half displays the options, and vice versa.

Unlike existing models and cameras further down the range, the D7200's display panel isn't interactive: you can't press a button to start navigating around to change settings. Instead, pressing the 'i' button, that does this on many other Nikon DSLRs, brings up a list of settings Nikon thinks you'll want to change.

	Finally, press the 'i' button (which 'activates' the status panel on many other Nikon DSLRs) and you get a pre-populated list of other settings you might want to change. These can't be adjusted to suit your specific requirements, but you're likely to find the settings you change most often already have more immediate ways of accessing them.

Oddly, for a contemporary camera, this list doesn't appear to be customizable, nor is it in any way responsive to the user (it's not populated with your most recently-used settings). This seems oddly restrictive for a contemporary camera at this level. While most of the options on the list seem fairly sensibly chosen, it seems likely that every user will find at least some of the options irrelevant, yet will have to scroll past them every time they use the menu.

Auto ISO

The D7200 has the same AUTO ISO behavior as other recent Nikons: you can specify the upper ISO setting that the camera will use and set the shutter speed threshold at which it will increase ISO to maintain that shutter speed. As well as being able to specify a shutter speed, there's also an 'Auto' setting, which chooses a shutter speed based on the focal length you're currently shooting at. This Auto option can, in turn, be adjusted to choose a faster or slower shutter speed than its default 1/equivalent focal length logic would choose.
Unlike the more basic Nikon DSLRs, Auto ISO can be engaged and disengaged using the rear ISO button and the front command dial, so there's no need to wade through the camera menus. One setting you might want to find in the menus is the 'Hi ISO command dial access' option. This defines whether you can access the camera's highest two, mono-only ISO settings (Hi1 and Hi2) using the ISO button and command dial. By default it's set to 'Off' to prevent you accidentally selecting one of the mono modes.