Nikon D3200 review – Discontinued, but still a bargain secondhand

It’s fast approaching six years since Nikon’s budget DSLR, the D3200, was released to the world. When it first launched way back in 2012, it showed the older D5100 what for and was a perfectly capable budget camera. It’s since been superseded twice – first by the newer Nikon D3300 and more recently by the Nikon D3400, which we believe is now the best entry-level DSLR camera on the market. So how does the D3200 hold up after all this time and with two new models available for little extra cost?

Considering you can now pick it up for around £170 body only secondhand, the D3200 is definitely a steal. Despite its age, it still offers a surprising amount of features for your hard-earned money, even if does fit into the budget camera category. For under £200, you’ve got some impressive specs for an entry-level DSLR, with impressive picture and video quality too.

Now that the Nikon D3300 is currently around £100 more new, and the D3400 only another £100 on top of that, the big questions are: does newer actually mean better? And is there much point in forking out the extra cash for the newer models?

The D3200’s 24-megapixel resolution was a big step up for Nikon’s budget line and remains the typical resolution for Nikon’s range to this day, it’s also considerably more pixels than the 1200D’s 18-megapixel sensor. Continuous shooting is at a very respectable four frames-per-second. The screen isn’t articulated but it shares the 921,000-dot resolution of many more expensive Nikon models – and is a vast improvement on the old D3100’s 230,000-dot screen. It even has one more button than the then mid-range D5100, giving direct access to the drive mode, although a step back from the D3100’s lever for the same function.

Nikon’s SLRs were the first to offer a customisable Auto ISO mode, letting the user set thresholds for shutter and ISO speed for precise control over the camera’s behaviour in diminishing light. However, it doesn’t allow for the fact that it’s harder to avoid camera shake at longer focal lengths. The D3200 addresses this with an Auto option for the minimum shutter speed setting. This set the threshold to 1/30s for wide-angle shots with the 18-55mm kit lens, but raised it to 1/100s for telephoto shots.

It’s a useful improvement, but it’s a shame that Nikon didn’t take the opportunity to redesign the layout of the ISO speed controls. Switching Auto ISO on or off still takes anything up to 20 button pushes. It’s also unclear how the various ISO speed controls relate to each other. Another frustration is that the speed chosen by the Auto ISO system is only visible when using live view, and doesn’t appear in the information shown below the viewfinder.

It’s somewhat ironic because ease of use is meant to be one of the D3200’s key selling points. We like labelled, single-function buttons because they’re so quick to use, but there’s an argument that people upgrading from point-and-shoot compacts prefer fewer buttons and menu-driven controls. The D3200 takes this further with its Guide mode, which falls somewhere between scene presets and an interactive photography course. It offers a choice of shooting conditions and advises which settings to use. However, there are significant gaps in its advice. For example, it recommends a 1/1,000s shutter speed to freeze motion, then complains that the subject is too dark but doesn’t suggest a solution.

Still, day-to-day use with the D3200 isn’t so bad. It’s easy to move the autofocus point and access drive mode and exposure compensation settings. A customisable Fn button can be set to control the ISO speed or white balance, among other options. It can’t access the Auto ISO mode, though, or calibrate the manual white balance function – these functions are buried in the sprawling main menu.

Video Quality

Videos are recorded at 1080p at 24, 25 or 30fps, while 720p clips are at 50 or 60fps. The autofocus system is clearly designed for photography rather than video, and smattered the soundtrack with gentle whirrs when we half-pressed the shutter button to update focus while recording. It’s a lot better than the video autofocus in Canon’s SLRs, which lurch about like a bull in a china shop (although we await the newly announced 650D and EOS M for testing), but not as smooth as Panasonic, Sony and Olympus CSCs. The D3300 however adds 50 and 60fps options at Full HD, pretty handy now that YouTube support such formats for more fluid-looking video.

The microphone socket provides a solution, allowing an external mic to be placed a good distance away from the camera, and it’s great to find one on an entry-level SLR. Another unexpected treat is full manual control over the shutter speed, aperture and ISO speed in video mode – an essential feature for serious video projects but previously unavailable in entry-level SLRs. Casual users will prefer to use automatic exposure, which reacted quickly and smoothly to changing light. Exposure compensation and lock give a useful amount of control without having to set everything manually. The D3100’s videos were limited to 10 minutes per clip, but the D3200’s extend to 20 minutes. Meanwhile, its HDMI port is active not just during playback but also for live view and video recording. All in all, this is a seriously impressive video camera.

Photo Quality

Nikon SLRs have a superb track record for photo quality, but we were interested to see how the 24-megapixel sensor performed. There was a little more detail than from the 16-megapixel D5100 in the centre of the frame in our studio scene, but the improvement wasn’t as big as the numbers might suggest. In outdoor shots, focus was often worryingly soft at the centre, while the foreground at the bottom of the frame appeared sharper even though we’d selected the centre autofocus point. At first we thought that the kit lens might be to blame, but the problem persisted when we replaced it with a Nikkor F/4G ED VR, which costs around £850.

The massive 24-megapixel sensor means there are lots of pixels to crop to reveal small details … – click to enlarge

Nikon sent us a replacement D3200, which didn’t exhibit this front-focusing problem, but it’s worrying that the first camera passed Nikon’s quality control – we wonder how many first-time SLR buyers would have the confidence to report the fault. The replacement camera wasn’t perfect, either, exhibiting more than its fair share of autofocus errors.

After extensive tests with a variety of lenses and comparing with other cameras, we failed to pinpoint the cause, but our suspicion is that it was a combination of a number of factors: slight calibration errors in the autofocus system, possible issues with optical stabilisation and an overzealous anti-alias filter. A Nikon D800 produced far sharper per-pixel details using the same lens – as you might hope, given its £2,600 price – but so too did the Samsung NX20, which is much closer in price to the D3200. We don’t necessarily expect an entry-level SLR to have eye-popping details, but we do when it’s rated at 24 megapixels.

… but a large number of our test shots exhibited slightly soft focus – click to enlarge

The downside of the huge resolution was increased noise at fast ISO speeds, with the D3200 beginning to show a clear lead for image quality at ISO 800. We’ve grown wearily accustomed to seeing extra resolution at the expense of noise levels in compact cameras, but it’s disappointing to see the same thing happening to SLRs.

Noise at fast ISO speeds isn’t too obtrusive, but most lower-resolution SLRs are cleaner – click to enlarge

Verdict

The D3200 has some impressive specs for an entry-level SLR, especially one that’s this old and this cheap. It goes up against the similarly-priced but far more recent Canon EOS 1200D. However, the Nikon’s kit lens has image stabilisation, which the basic 1200D kit doesn’t, and you’ll want to pay the extra £40 for it. The Nikon also has faster continuous shooting and more megapixels – 4fps vs 3fps and 24 vs 18. The Canon’s sensor is arguably slightly superior in terms of noise levels but not enough to level up the marks against it. The D3300 is a step up, but then at £100 more it’s a big step up in price for those looking to spend as little as possible – alternatively, you could buy a nice little lens for that amount. So if you’re looking for a Canon or Nikon starter camera then the D3200 should be high up on your list.