Body & Design
The D5200 is very similar in design to its predecessor, the D5100, with only a few changes. The lines are slightly more sleek and streamlined - for example the little finger 'hook' on the left side has gone - but side-by-side you'd need to look very closely to tell them apart. The main changes are on the top plate, where the D5200 gains a stereo microphone in front of the hot shoe, and a new drive mode button beside the mode dial.
Overall, what this means is that you get a small, lightweight SLR that despite its plastic body feels pretty solid, with no flexing or creaking. It's got a reasonable set of external controls, and of course a fully-articulated LCD screen that offers a great deal of flexibility for live view and movie shooting. The 4-way controller on the back of the camera is used directly to move the active focus point around the viewfinder, which really comes into its own with the D5200's 39-point AF system. The flip-side of this is that more functions have to be accessed via the rear screen's 'control panel' interface compared to its main rival, the Canon EOS 650D.
The D5200 also offers a full array of connectors - along with the usual HDMI and USB/AV out, there's a stereo microphone input for movie recording, and a multi-function port that accepts both Nikon's optional GP-1 GPS unit, and the MC-DC2 electronic cable release. The camera also has also front and rear receivers for the ML-L3 wireless remote. Overall the D5200 is a distinctly well-featured little camera.
Top of camera
The top of the D5200 hosts most of the main shooting controls. The on/off switch is concentric with the shutter button, with the exposure compensation and red movie record buttons immediately behind. The latter does nothing outside of live view, which is entered by pulling on the (slightly awkwardly-placed) sprung lever next to the main exposure mode dial. Beside this is the D5200's new drive mode button.
In front of the hot shoe (which is covered in this view) you can also see the new stereo microphones for movie recording, and on the left shoulder the built-in speaker that provides sound for movie playback.
In your hand
Articulating LCD screen
The D5200 has a similar side-hinged swivel-and-tilt screen to the D5100, which offers a wide range of movement and (unlike tilt-only screens) can still be used in portrait format either at waist level or overhead. This is great for live view and working off a tripod, as well as for video shooting.
Viewfinder
The D5200 uses a similar viewfinder to the D5100, which means it's of the pentamirror type with 95% coverage of the image area, and a not-especially-impressive 0.78x magnification. It's arguably the least-impressive aspect of the entire camera.
Disappointingly the D5200 doesn't have an eye sensor either to turn off the rear screen when you're using the viewfinder, so it can flicker away distractingly at you, turning off as you half-press the shutter then lighting up again when you take your finger away. You can at least use the 'info' button behind the shutter release to manually turn the screen off.
On the plus side, you can configure the D5200 to display gridlines in the finder to help align your horizontals and verticals, and display the current ISO setting in place of the default 'frames remaining' (which is generally pointless with modern large SD cards). Both of these are genuinely useful options that aren't available on the cheaper D3200.











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