I picked up my D610 today... very impressed

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I picked up my D610 body only today and I can't quite put my finger on it, but this feels like a much bigger upgrade to the D600 than has been mentioned in reviews. I noticed on my D600, when using the SB700 flash, the adjustment dial was digging into my forehead, quite literally. It wasn't particularly comfortable, however the D610 feels different in this respect. I believe the body is the same so I'm unsure why this is, but it definitely doesn't feel quite the same.

The White balance is definitely improved as well but I can't confirm whether the focus system is fast (as I've heard) until my 24-85 arrives from the sales section on here.

The quiet shutter mechanism is much, well, quieter as well. It was a bit disconcerting on the D600 as it took too long to release and occasionally caused a blurry photo. On the D610, the process is not only quieter, but faster, and the Qc option allows for a quiet 3 burst rate per second, although I personally prefer to shoot one shot at a time anyway.

So in all, I'm very happy so far. Of course it's a lot of extra money for something that Nikon should have sorted out with the D600 anyway, however it's definitely what the D600 should have been in the first place.

The only bugbear right now is that Lightroom doesn't seem to support the NEF files that the camera produces in RAW. Pretty annoying as I have to shoot in low light next week and I'll no doubt need to play with the files a little. Fingers crossed this is addressed sooner rather than later!
 
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It's good to see your happy with your new D610. I'm getting very tempted to buy one of these, particularly as the price seems to be dropping rapidly. Thanks for your observations.
 
The only bugbear right now is that Lightroom doesn't seem to support the NEF files that the camera produces in RAW.

I don't know if it works but some have suggested modifying the NEFs so that Lightroom will read them - i.e. change the camera model from D610 to D600 using an exif editor. See http://d610.org/open-d610-raw-files-nef/#exiftool. Best to try this on copies rather than the original NEFs!

Failing that, Capture NX2.
 
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I don't know if it works but some have suggested modifying the NEFs so that Lightroom will read them - i.e. change the camera model from D610 to D600 using an exif editor. See http://d610.org/open-d610-raw-files-nef/#exiftool. Best to try this on copies rather than the original NEFs!

Failing that, Capture NX2.

Or if you don't have CNX2, you could use ViewNX to generate a batch of Tiffs and import the files into LR. This way you can retail the Nikon settings and how images appear exactly on your camera. Only drawback is huge tiff files.
 
Thanks for the advice. I'm going out with a friend in the morning to take some pics so will just shoot in RAW+JPEG for now, until a fix is available. Pretty annoying of course but at least I'll be able to play around a little.

I'd agree that the d610 isn't worth the extra £600, however I got a much better deal than this and the oiled splatter was SO bad on my d600, it would have been an ongoing nightmare. Even the replacement shutters don't seem to be fixing the issue so in my mind, the d600 is null and void, with the d610 being what the d600 should have been in the first place. Poor form by Nikon but the d610 is hopefully going to be a much more reliable alternative.
 
Thanks for the advice. I'm going out with a friend in the morning to take some pics so will just shoot in RAW+JPEG for now, until a fix is available. Pretty annoying of course but at least I'll be able to play around a little.

I'd agree that the d610 isn't worth the extra £600, however I got a much better deal than this and the oiled splatter was SO bad on my d600, it would have been an ongoing nightmare. Even the replacement shutters don't seem to be fixing the issue so in my mind, the d600 is null and void, with the d610 being what the d600 should have been in the first place. Poor form by Nikon but the d610 is hopefully going to be a much more reliable alternative.

Out of interest what deal did you get in the D610?
 
It was £1700 for the D610 and SB700 Flash, plus £40 cashback.

I was buying the flash anyway so the camera effectively owes me 1500ish.
 
Decent deal, £900 for a D600 here, I do live in fear of the dust spots though!

That's a great deal on your D600, but unfortunately even if I'd found that deal (I wasn't far off anyweay with mine), I still would have gone down the same route as I did. I know the spots can be edited out of course, however mine had such a build up on the top left hand side that I'd need to do more than just spot removal. Looking at the photos, over the 600 I took, it seemed to build up more and more in the photos when reviewing them and ruined at least two.

Latest info from Adobe (http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/):
  • ACR 8.3 Release Candidate for Photoshop CS6/CC became available yesterday - it includes the D610.
  • Lightroom 5.3 Release Candidate also became available yesterday and it too supports the D610.
Download for Lightroom 5.3RC - http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/lightroom5-3.html

BRILLIANT!! Couldn't be better timing. I'm downloading it now :-D
 
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