Nikon D3100 (17.7 oz./502g with battery and card) with 18-55mm VR. enlarge. If you find this page useful and would like to help support my work here, the biggest help is when you use these links, especially these directly to the D3100 at Adorama (either with 18-55mm VR lens or with 18-55mm VR and 55-200mm VR lenses), Amazon with 18-55mm VR, Amazon with 18-55mm and 55-200mm VR, or Ritz with 18-55 VR when you get anything, regardless of the country in which you live. Thank you! Ken.November 2010 More Nikon Reviews Nikon Lens Reviews
Nikon D3100 User's Guide 30 September 2010Nikon D3100, D3 and D40 High ISO Comparison 29 September 2010
Introduction top
The Nikon D3100 is a very competent and ultra-lightweight DSLR. It is small and light, but doesn't feel dinky. It feels like the precision product it is. The D3100 is Nikon's lightest SLR, ever, and probably their smallest, too.
The next thing one notices is how uncannily quiet and refined it is. If this were a LEICA, people would be talking themselves senseless over its "subtle refinement" and ultra-low vibration. The quiet helps us photograph without disturbing others, and the low vibration ensures sharper hand-held shots. You don't even need the Quiet mode, which is as easy as flipping a big switch on top; the D3100 is supremely quiet in all its modes.
The next thing is the D3100's big LCD. It's big, but a bit grainy; you can see each pixel, unlike the high-resolution screens of the D90 and above.
The D3100 has a new playback feature copied from the LEICA M9: when you look at the histogram, as you zoom and scroll around the image, the histogram shows only what's in your zoom window. This makes it trivial to check highlights more precisely than ever before on any Nikon: just zoom in and look around!
Shoot a bit more, and you'll appreciate the D3100's clear finder. It doesn't have as much scribbling on the screen as other cameras. Instead of big etchings for each AF area, there are subtle, fine lines and tiny LED dots that light, only for a moment, to highlight the AF point selections. This makes it much easier to compose than with many other inexpensive DSLRs, like the nasty AF point display in the Canon 7D.
The D3100 is a very competent DSLR. It's images are pretty similar to the D3 and D700, if you have good light. At higher ISOs, noise reduction blurs the images to keep the D3100's noise about the same as FX cameras.
The two biggest external improvements over the D3000 and D5000 are a dedicated advance-mode switch (Single, Continuous, Self-Timer or Quiet), and dedicated movie-start and live-view controls.
The improvements over the D3000 are numerous. The D3000 took way too long to process and record images made with ADR (Adaptive Dynamic Range), had awful high-ISO performance, and the D3000 locked-out image review controls until after you hit the PLAY button! Those problems were unique to the D3000 and fixed in the D3100, so good riddance to the D3000.
The D3100 becomes my first recommendation for a low-cost, high-performance DSLR to replace the Nikon D40. The old D3000 was so crummy that I had to suggest the more expensive D5000 instead.
Nikon claims the D3100 autofocuses as you shoot movies, but it tracks poorly and spoils the audio in the process.
What's Missing top
The D3100 loses lots of weight: even the D90 weighs almost 50% more than this D3100!
The D3100 has pretty much everything anyone needs. The very few things missing are things few people use or understand: No internal AF motor to autofocus older AF (screw-type) lenses.
No Kelvin White Balance setting.
Only one manual preset WB memory position.
No depth-of-field preview.
No two-green-button reset.
No external switch to select the AF-Area selection mode. The rear dial can select the AF point, but if you want to go between the auto-area select mode, single point mode or multipoint tracking modes, you have to stop and set it using the LCD.
