D7100 or D7200

[overco]

The D7100 is roughly 530$ right now and the the D7200 I can get used for roughly 750$. I am looking to shoot landscapes and some portraits with a 50mm 1.8G (which I already own) and Tokina 11-16 (looking to buy). The buffer isn't important to me, but the ISO performance is. Are the two very different when it comes to ISO performance or is it too minor to justify 200 extra dollars?

 

[goodguy]

D7100 is a great camera, I know I owned it
The D7200 is better, not much better but better
If you want to save on cash then why not consider the D5500 ?
Same sensor as the D7200 but in a low body so you are looking at same low light performance and image quality and you save on cash.

As I said a million times before I dont like to buy yesterdays tech, thats me, is it worth 200$ ?
To me yes!

BTW the D7100 has banding problem in higher ISO something that isnt an issue with the new sensor in the D7200/D5500

 

[Don Kondra]

The D7100 is roughly 530$ right now and the the D7200 I can get used for roughly 750$. I am looking to shoot landscapes and some portraits with a 50mm 1.8G (which I already own) and Tokina 11-16 (looking to buy). The buffer isn't important to me, but the ISO performance is. Are the two very different when it comes to ISO performance or is it too minor to justify 200 extra dollars?

I found I was comfortable shooting the D7100 @ iso 1600. With the D7200 I am @ iso 2000.

And I never had banding issues with the D7100 but never pushed it past iso 3200.

So for $200 you get a larger buffer, a newer processor (Expeed 4) and slightly better iso performance.

Cheers, Don

 

[ByronBrant]

D7200 better focus (expeed 4) better high ISO performance, better buffer, better battery life, has the better Sony sensor. The 7100 has the Samsung sensor?

For me it is worth the extra money. No question

 

[jaomul]

They are close with the buffer being a massive improvement. At 220 dollars difference I'd probably say save for 7200. It's jpeg engine is better imo, raw wise there's a very slight iso improvement. Having said that a d7100 with a good lens will do better than a 7200 with a poor one. The d7100 isn't really a sacrifice if you don't need a big raw buffer

 

[DarkShadow]

The D7100 has the toshiba sensor 5105 and there is a lot of brilliant photos here and all over the inter webs from the D7100 but there is improvements on the D7200 especially in the buffer but that should not be relevant for landscape and portraits.I haven't seen a landscape running away yet and most portraits I have seen are usually still and with the use of good lighting and fast glass, I doubt you will have ISO issues.

 

[Derrel]

At base-level ISO settings, the D7200's newer sensor has a 0.9 EV higher dynamic range capability in DxO Mark's stringent testing. At High ISO levels, the advantage numerically is around 1/3 of an EV....huh...seems like that squares perfectly with D7100 owner and subsequent D7200 owner Don Kondra's actual opinion of ISO 1,600 for the D7100 and ISO 2,000 for the D7200. it's almost like Don's actual user experience is the same as DxO Mark's ratings would indicate.

Nikon D7200 vs Nikon D7100 | DxOMark

The "banding issue" that has been seen in D7100 cameras is something that virtually ALL "older-generation" sensor had when shadow areas were underexposed, and then the images were later "shadow-lifted" in software. MOST ALL older cameras/sensors will show this issue. Most all Canon cameras still have this issue. Hidden noise can often go absolutely un-seen, as long as the shadow areas where noise or banding lives remain as shadowed areas!

Evaluating how much "buried noise" there is within the shadow areas, by deliberately under-exposing a shot, and then "lifting" the shadows in software, and brightening up the images has become a new way to test sensor capabilities; dPreview is using the idea of ISO invariance, and some other testers are also using this same methodology.

The D7200 is the camera that dPreview has proclaimed to be almost totally ISO invariant. Which is a very good thing, a very important technical milestone. The D7100 has a very good sensor, but there are people who are always looking for that next level of technology: the D7200 and the newest-generation Sony cameras in the A7 series for example, are also highly ISO invariant.

How much pattern noise, color noise, how much banding is "buried" become evident when actual comparisons are made, as in this screen cap I made. Look at how astoundingly clean the D7200's image is, compared against a few other common, well-like cameras when a 5- to 6-EV "lift" is done to an underexposed image area that SHOULD be a clean, smooth black! from Nikon D7200 Review

 

[Derrel]

The issue of banding and so on is one that comes up fairly often from serious landscape shooters, people who are often really pushing their cameras to record very wide scene dynamic ranges...people whoa re doing HDR type tone-mapping...shooting toward the sun or bright sky areas and who want to take multi-frame shots and then combine images....looking for the absolutely widest dynamic range AND the absolutely cleanest, most-pure shadows, with the least banding, and the absolute least possible chroma noise.

Notice those color speckles, the chroma noise in the three Canon-made sensor cameras? Those shadow areas from the test target SHOULD, ideally, be deep, pure, clean black areas and low tones, like say, the shadowed areas beside a log in the forest, or the shadowed side of a boulder in landscape, or the dark areas in a High-ISO sports shot...

And, not to put too fine a point on it--but please do look at that GRAY box area in all six of the above test images...notice how that is ALSO showing a lot of image quality loss in "some cameras"? We're not talking about only the black areas...this noise and banding is not confined only to the darkest tones...it's somewhat, uh, what's the word? Pervasive maybe?

...now, as long as you keep those areas DARK, and free of visible detail, the banding, the noise, or the combination of banding and noise, will be virtually, or mostly, invisible. The real advantage that Sony's latest-generation sensors have brought--when combined with Nikon's electronics and image processing pipeline--is the advantage of a much,much,much wider range of in-camera exposure options AND much wider post-processing file manipulation before the images start to reveal fundamental-level flaws.

The question is: how clean do you really want the shadowed areas to be? Do you want to be able to do a two-frame merge, or a three-frame merge, or are you happy doing a 5-frame merge, in order to get CLEAN, PURE, unpolluted, non-banded shadowed areas? Do you want to be able to do a SINGLE-frame shot with over 14 stops' worth of dynamic range with each shutter click, at Base ISO?

 

[overco]

The issue of banding and so on is one that comes up fairly often from serious landscape shooters, people who are often really pushing their cameras to record very wide scene dynamic ranges...people whoa re doing HDR type tone-mapping...shooting toward the sun or bright sky areas and who want to take multi-frame shots and then combine images....looking for the absolutely widest dynamic range AND the absolutely cleanest, most-pure shadows, with the least banding, and the absolute least possible chroma noise.

Notice those color speckles, the chroma noise in the three Canon-made sensor cameras? Those shadow areas from the test target SHOULD, ideally, be deep, pure, clean black areas and low tones, like say, the shadowed areas beside a log in the forest, or the shadowed side of a boulder in landscape, or the dark areas in a High-ISO sports shot...

And, not to put too fine a point on it--but please do look at that GRAY box area in all six of the above test images...notice how that is ALSO showing a lot of image quality loss in "some cameras"? We're not talking about only the black areas...this noise and banding is not confined only to the darkest tones...it's somewhat, uh, what's the word? Pervasive maybe?

...now, as long as you keep those areas DARK, and free of visible detail, the banding, the noise, or the combination of banding and noise, will be virtually, or mostly, invisible. The real advantage that Sony's latest-generation sensors have brought--when combined with Nikon's electronics and image processing pipeline--is the advantage of a much,much,much wider range of in-camera exposure options AND much wider post-processing file manipulation before the images start to reveal fundamental-level flaws.

The question is: how clean do you really want the shadowed areas to be? Do you want to be able to do a two-frame merge, or a three-frame merge, or are you happy doing a 5-frame merge, in order to get CLEAN, PURE, unpolluted, non-banded shadowed areas? Do you want to be able to do a SINGLE-frame shot with over 14 stops' worth of dynamic range with each shutter click, at Base ISO?

Can I expect better landscape photos with the D7200 or is it not noticeable enough?

 

[Shades of Blue]

I have a D5000, and bought it several years ago. Recently, I went into a shop and was fiddling with a D3300. I couldn't believe how much better the LCD screen looked, and it seemed as if it was double the camera for half the price. It got me thinking I'd like to purchase a D3300 on eBay and have 2 bodies for my photography. Then, I realized that if I sold my D5000 I could essentially buy the D7100 and not really spend that much more on a MUCH better camera than my D5000.

I too have a decision to make, but I said all that to say that I think you'd be better served to get the D7100. It's just a better value "right now." In no time both the D7100 and D7200 will both be obsolete, and you will have gotten a better deal on almost the same camera. The D7100 is still a very relevant camera.

It sounds like you don't want to buy older technology, and that's great, but all it takes is 6 months for your purchase to be "outdated." Make the best decision based on your budget and what you have currently. If you don't have a camera, any camera is better than what you have. If you have a D3XXX or D5XXX, a D7XXX will be better than that and so on...

If you have $500 to spend, you don't walk into a store looking at $1000 cameras. Your brain will try to convince you that "if I spend a little more," but remember you have $500.