Nikon D7100 DSLR User Review – A Bug’s Eye View Of A Great DSLR

VIDEO ANALYSIS

Nikon has said that the D7100 can take high definition video at 1920 x 1080 / 60i, to which we immediately wanted to demonstrate the immersive colour comparison with the luscious green plants, and brightly coloured butterflies. In the video below, we showcase a butterfly feeding off of the pollen being produced by a flower in the conservatory, with the butterfly, every so carefully, flapping its wings.

As you can see from the above video, the Nikon D7100 captured the butterfly very well, but the auto-focus feature while recording was a bit slow. It actually took a few different shooting angles before we were able to get auto-focus to pick up the butterfly. Unfortunately, one thing we  noticed after our trip to the conservatory was that we had the microphone muted. We had previously record the Thermaltake Tt eSPORTS Theron Infrared Gaming mouse with the Nikon D7100, and utilized the muted auto feature in order to capture just the video. When going to use the camera without audio, there is not much to warn you about the absence of sound. Just a small muted-microphone icon on the display. It would have been a little nicer to be warned about this, but then again how often would you muted the audio during your recordings.

We did continue our experience through the Butterfly Conservatory, and often enough you found out that the butterflies are not camera shy. In fact, just like you can see below, they fight for the spotlight!

The ability for the D7100 and lens to quickly, yet smoothly, zoom in on a butterfly that was a fair distance away was quite impressive.

It was hard to get over how much these insects love the spotlight. While some seemed to be more interested in that lovely looking orange slice, others seemed to jump in front of the camera to flaunt their stuff. There were also a few butterflies that tried to make the trip back home with us.

Finally realizing the lack of sound in our videos, we decided to take one more adventure with the Nikon D7100 down to the nearby Welland Canal.

What striked us to be most interesting about the camera’s audio ability, was the separation of different sounds. As you can hear from the video below, the camera easily picked up a seagull that was 75 yards away and a motorcycle that was driving around roughly 40 yards away. Even on such a windy day, the audio easily separated the wind from the other sounds, and only on certain occasions was the wind actually picked up.