Nikon D780

£2199/$2300

The Nikon D780 is staging something of a counterattack against the advancing hordes of mirrorless cameras. It takes crucial mirrorless technology, from Nikon’s own Z 6, to produce a kind of hybrid camera that offers the best of both worlds – an optical through-the-lens viewfinder, with the high-performance Live View AF and video features of a mirrorless camera.

But what’s the beef with DSLRs vs mirrorless cameras? Traditionally, DSLRs offer optical viewing, but compromised (slow) Live View autofocus. Mirrorless cameras offer fast, hybrid on-sensor phase-detection AF, but compromise with an electronic viewfinder, though many see this as an advantage.

Now Nikon is using its phase-detection on-sensor Dual Pixel CMOS AF system to give the D780 the same Live View performance as its own mirrorless bodies. All along, there’s been no technical reason why DSLRs shouldn’t have the same on-sensor Live View AF features as mirrorless cameras, and now it’s slowly starting to happen.

The D780 is the first Nikon DSLR to use this on-sensor hybrid AF, but seems unlikely to be the last. It’s a more upmarket alternative to the popular and long-running Nikon D750, sharing the same 24.5Mp resolution, but now with fast Live View AF, 4K video, continuous shooting up to 12fps and improved processing.