Nikon D780 Camera Review

The Nikon D780 isn't very portable. It's heavy and bulky, making it harder to carry around for long periods, although it still feels well-balanced with its kit lens attached. If you'd prefer a more portable full-frame camera, consider a mirrorless option like the Sony α7 IV.

The Nikon D780 has a magnesium alloy and carbon fiber body, and it feels excellently constructed. The buttons feel solid and give decent physical feedback. The tilting mechanism of the screen also feels sturdy. A secure locking door covers the SD card and battery compartment, while rubber flaps cover the inputs and outputs. The camera is also weather-sealed against elements like moisture and dust, giving you some added protection when shooting in more adverse weather conditions.

The Nikon D780 has several customizable buttons, including two custom shooting modes on the mode dial. You can also remap many existing functions to suit your preferences.

It has two command dials. By default, when in manual mode, the front dial, which sits just below the shutter button, controls aperture, while the rear dial controls shutter speed. The rear dial adjusts ISO and exposure compensation when pressing and holding those buttons respectively.

• Nikon D780 camera body
• Nikkor 24-120mm f/4G ED VR lens
• Lens cap
• Rear lens cover
• Sensor cap
• Lens hood
• Lens bag
• Viewfinder eyepiece cap
• USB-A to USB-C cable
• AC cable
• Battery charger
• 1x Nikon EN-EL15b battery
• Shoulder strap
• User manual

The Nikon D780 feels very comfortable to shoot with. It's suitable for all hand sizes, and its large handgrip and rubberized thumb rest make it easy to maintain a secure hold on the camera. The eyecup around the viewfinder feels comfortable, and you can easily change settings with either eye to the viewfinder thanks to its many physical controls and intuitive button layout. The camera's heavy weight and size also make it a bit cumbersome to carry around, especially if your hands are on the smaller side.

The Nikon D780 is a DSLR, so it uses an optical viewfinder, giving you a clear, lag-free view through the lens. It's large and comfortable to rest your eye against.

The Nikon D780 has a large, tilting screen, which lets you quickly and easily take shots from lower angles. The screen is very bright, enough to overcome glare on sunny days, and its high resolution gives you a clear view of whatever you're shooting. It has full touch capability, meaning you can use it to navigate the menu and select focus points or take a picture when the 'Touch AF' or 'Touch Shutter' settings are enabled.

The menu system is fantastic, similar to other Nikon cameras like the Nikon Z 6II. Although there are a lot of settings, and it can be hard to find some of the more advanced camera functions, the menu is clearly organized and easy to navigate with either the touchscreen or the directional pad. It has lots of customization options and a quick menu to quickly access commonly used settings.

In addition to the usual assistance functions, available in both photo and video mode, the Nikon D780 also has a focusing aid when using manual focus that indicates whether the focus point is behind or in front of the subject, meaning you can make the necessary adjustments. It's worth noting that you can't have the level display active at the same time as the histogram.

The Nikon D780 has a fantastic battery life. You can easily go multiple days of shooting without recharging the battery, depending on how often you shoot and how you use it. Recording a lot of video, for instance, drains it faster, but it still lasts a decently long time for continuous video recording. It also supports USB charging while in use, so you can bring a portable battery pack for longer video recording sessions.

The Nikon D780 has a very wide shutter speed range. With 'Extended Shutter Speeds' enabled, you can shoot at up to 15 minutes (900s) for long exposure photography or astrophotography. You can use the standard mechanical shutter or an electronic shutter for silent Live View shooting. This camera also includes an electronic front-curtain shutter (EFCS) option to help reduce camera vibrations at slower shutter speeds, although the EFCS can introduce distortion with bokeh at wider apertures and shutter speeds above 1/2000s. Thankfully, the camera automatically limits the max shutter speed to 1/2000s when using the EFCS.

The Nikon D780 has a fairly large buffer, especially for RAW photos, and thankfully, it clears its buffer very quickly, so you can get back to shooting should you fill the buffer up. It can shoot at up to 7 fps in its continuous shooting mode when using the mechanical shutter. Though it isn't the fastest burst rate out there, it still does a reasonable job of keeping up with fast-moving subjects. It also shoots at up to 12 fps when using 12-bit electronic shutter mode. E-shutters can distort very fast-moving subjects, but this mode is helpful if you want to shoot silently.

The Nikon D780 has a hybrid autofocus system. When shooting through the viewfinder, it uses a slower but more accurate contrast-detection system, taken from the Nikon D5 DSLR. This mode gives you a smaller focus area with fewer AF points but gives you very accurate focusing for still subjects. When shooting through the screen with Live View, however, it uses an on-sensor phase-detection AF system borrowed from the Nikon Z 6. This mode has 273 AF points across a much wider coverage area and gives you faster autofocus performance and lets you track moving subjects closer to the edges of the frame.

The results on the review are those we achieved when using the viewfinder since we found it to be more accurate as a whole, though its performance will vary depending on your shooting conditions, subject, and lens. Overall, the camera does a good job of tracking moving objects and faces, but since the AF is a bit slower through the viewfinder, you'll find that it sometimes can't quite keep up with faster-moving subjects, though most shots are still usable.

The camera also has lots of settings that let you fine-tune the autofocus performance, including a wide variety of area modes. It supports face and eye detection and lets you quickly switch between faces when multiple are detected in the frame. Through the viewfinder, the camera uses Nikon's '3D Tracking', which uses predictive algorithms to automatically track subjects after you've locked onto them. In Live View, it uses a slightly different subject tracking feature that you have to engage by pressing the 'OK' button before half-pressing the shutter to lock onto your subject. The camera also has a touch tracking feature that lets you select the subject by touching the screen, although we found touch tracking to be fairly unreliable.

The Nikon D780 doesn't have in-body image stabilization, but you can use optically stabilized lenses like the Nikkor 24-120mm f/4G ED VR kit lens. The 'VR' stands for 'Vibration Reduction', which is Nikon's term for image stabilization. Though it doesn't have IBIS, the D780 does have an electronic stabilization feature for added stability. Combining electronic stabilization with optical stabilization does a fantastic job of reducing camera shake, meaning you can take handheld shots at very slow shutter speeds.

The Nikon D780 has fantastic dynamic range. It has a very wide usable dynamic range at its base ISO, allowing you to capture a broader range of highlight and shadow detail in a single shot. The camera has really good noise handling, so you can adjust the exposure of a shot a fair amount before getting much visual noise. However, the camera tends to overcompensate for underexposure, so you can get a lot of blown-out highlights if you push an image too far in post-processing.

Photos taken on the Nikon D780 are incredibly sharp, even as you raise the ISO, though investing in a high-quality lens is key to getting the most out of a camera of this caliber.

JPEGs taken straight out of the camera have excellent color accuracy. Most colors look very true to life, although reds tend more towards orange and deep blues tend to have more magenta. The colors are also very consistent as you raise the ISO.

When shooting in JPEG, photos taken with the Nikon D780 have very little noise, even at higher ISOs. The camera's noise reduction works very well, although it can flatten or blur some fine detail at very high ISO settings.

The Nikon D780 has superb RAW noise handling thanks to its dual-gain sensor. These types of sensors have two different readout modes for lower and higher ISOs. Above a certain ISO, the sensor uses more gain at the expense of dynamic range to reduce noise. Compared to a camera without dual-gain technology, like the Nikon Z 5, we can see that RAW files have even better noise performance at higher ISO levels, allowing you to shoot in low light with minimal noise and less color fringing.

The Nikon D780 supports Log shooting in N-Log format, allowing you to capture a wider usable dynamic range. It can also record in 10-bit color depth over HDMI, which allows the camera to capture more color information and gives you more room to play around with the look of your videos in post-production.

The Nikon D780 can shoot 4k video up to 30 fps, which is good for capturing more cinematic or natural-looking video.

The Nikon D780 has good internal recording capability in 4k. It has a pretty standard 30-minute recording time limit, meaning you can capture fairly long takes, but it's not good for long continuous recording. Thankfully, the camera doesn't overheat or shut down while recording for long periods. That said, it's limited to 8-bit 4:2:0 color internally, so if you want to record in 10-bit to capture more color information and have more leeway when editing your footage, you'll need to connect an external recorder over HDMI.

The Nikon D780 has satisfactory autofocus performance for 4k video. When shooting video, it uses a 273-point phase-detect AF system over Live View, which does a decent job tracking moving objects, although there can be a bit of a delay when the subject moves before the camera finds it again. Unfortunately, the camera doesn't support eye tracking in video mode, but it still tracks faces and does a great job overall at keeping moving human subjects in focus.

The Nikon D780 does an okay job stabilizing 4k video, but there's still some visible shakiness, even when you're just walking. There are two different stabilization settings available for optically stabilized lenses, including 'Normal' and 'Active'. On top of that, the camera has an electronic stabilization feature, which Nikon calls 'Vibration Reduction', though enabling it incurs a slight 1.1x crop.

Video quality is excellent in 4k. Videos look crisp and detailed, with colors that pop. It also does a great job in low light, with minimal noise in dark parts of the image. You can see a fair amount of detail in the shadows, although finer details, like the texture of the walls or tire tracks on the floor of the parking garage, can get flattened or lost.

Unfortunately, there's significant rolling shutter effect in 4k. It's especially noticeable when panning the camera at faster speeds, causing severe skewing with vertical lines and objects.

The Nikon D780 can record 1080p video up to 120 fps, which is fantastic if you want to incorporate slow-motion footage into your videos.

The Nikon D780 has good internal recording capability in 1080p. As with 4k, it has a 30-minute recording time limit, meaning you can record fairly long takes. However, it's limited to 8-bit 4:2:0 recording internally, so there's a limited amount of color information it can record, giving you less latitude when editing your footage.

In 1080p, the Nikon D780 has decent autofocus performance. When shooting video, it uses a 273-point phase-detect AF system over Live View. Overall, it performs similarly to how it does in 4k, with quick and accurate focusing, but it can sometimes take a moment to find its target again after it's moved. Unfortunately, eye tracking isn't available in video mode.

The Nikon D780 does a good job of stabilizing 1080p video. It only has an electronic stabilization feature rather than in-body sensor-shift stabilization, so it's best to use an optically stabilized lens when shooting handheld. There are two levels of optical stabilization: 'Normal' and 'Active'. The electronic stabilization is activated by enabling 'Vibration Reduction' (VR). Even with both features enabled, it can't eliminate camera shake completely. Enabling VR also incurs a slight 1.1x crop.

1080p video quality is good. It looks good in more controlled lighting, with a sharp image and vibrant colors. It's still good in low light, though it struggles a bit more than in 4k to bring out shadow detail. Thankfully, there isn't too much noise or pixelation.

There's much less rolling shutter effect when shooting in 1080p. Though there's still some distortion, it's hardly noticeable except when moving the camera very quickly, so it isn't especially distracting.

The Nikon D780 has two SD card slots rated for higher-speed UHS-II cards. This is great for pros who don't want to run out of storage while in the middle of a shoot or those who shoot a lot and want to have a running backup on the go.

The Nikon D780 has a wide array of inputs and outputs. There's a Mini HDMI port to connect to an external display or recorder for more involved video projects. It also has a microphone input and a headphone jack, which is great for filmmaking and lets you monitor your audio directly through the camera.