Roughly two years have elapsed between the introduction of the D7100 and the arrival of its successor, and on the surface the new D7200 seems more like an incremental update than a major overhaul. Nikon D7100 reviewThe D7200 is built around a sensor with a resolution of 24.2 million pixels, a tiny increase on the D7100's 24.1 million pixels, and the body is identical, with the same weight and dimensions, and the same viewfinder.In common with its predecessor, the D7200 has no anti-aliasing filter in front of the sensor, an innovation designed to produce sharper images and better rendering of fine detail. Anti-aliasing filters are used to prevent moir, or interference effects, when photographing fine textures or patterns, but at the time of the D7100's launch, Nikon claimed that the high pixel density of its sensor would make it unlikely to suffer from any moire patterning and we've not seen any reports from users suggesting it's a problem.

There are some significant improvements over the D7100, however, the first of which is the upgrading of the camera's internal processor from the Expeed 3 to the newer and more powerful Expeed 4. The frame rate remains the same as the D7100 ? 6fps at full resolution, or 7fps when using the 1.3x crop mode ? but the faster processor delivers improved buffering capacity, which was one of the biggest let-downs in the previous model. Nikon claims the D7200 is capable of capturing 100 JPEGs in a burst or 27 RAW files, although it should be noted that these figure relate to smaller 12-bit NEF files, and not the 14-bit files favoured by those looking for maximum image quality.Aside from increasing the frame rate, the 1.3x crop mode has a couple of other useful applications. It extends the reach of your lenses if you need to get closer to a subject, such as when shooting sports or wildlife, and with 24 million pixels of resolution, there's plenty of scope for cropping in on subjects while still being able to produce large, high quality prints. Secondly, it means that the 51 autofocus points cover the whole of the frame, rather than being grouped around the centre.