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I recently bought a D3200 after owning a D90 and seeing how my friends D3100 functions.

The D3200 is a very nice, cheap camera but I was surprised by the very poor quality of the pictures in the camera's screen. Once downloaded on to my laptop the quality of the photos is quite good for the price I paid but I had to take at least 6 different pics with different settings because I can not use the camera's screen as a reference.

I read a couple of opinions about the problem but this didn't help me very much. The new firmware released by Nikon doesn't mention anything about a improved rendering on the built-in screen.

Compared with the D3100 screen, the D3200 screen is totally useless. Have you heard anything new about the problem?

mattdm
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xavier
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    Hi and welcome to Photo.SE. It's not entirely clear what your problem is exactly. Are the colours way off? Is the screen too dark? Something else? Can you please describe the problem in more detail? If you have another camera, could you maybe attach a picture of the D3100 and D3200 side-by-side to show the exact problem? Also take look at the relevant questions: http://photo.stackexchange.com/q/33634/9161 http://photo.stackexchange.com/q/30836/9161 http://photo.stackexchange.com/q/39111/9161 – Saaru Lindestøkke Sep 21 '14 at 16:29
  • If your camera supports it, shoot tethered. – Blrfl Dec 01 '14 at 00:55
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    Please don't use the built-in display for any DSLR as any sort of reference other than maybe framing or (as suggested in the best answer) histogram or highlight. DSLR displays are almost always going to stress basic readability in less than ideal situations (i.e., outside in unknown lighting conditions), and just aren't the right thing for judging exposure or colour. Even the "best" such display will be terrible for this purpose when compared with your light meter or histogram info. Save your battery and turn the display off once you take a few test shots to determine the sweet spot. –  Feb 22 '19 at 20:19

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I haven't heard of this particular problem for this model, but it's a common-enough issue that LCD screens don't give accurate results. I wouldn't worry about it too much — use the histogram and other tools (like Highlight Alert) to judge exposure. If you want to use in-camera JPEG processing, you'll soon become familiar with how saturation, contrast, and other parameters affect the results. Taking several test shots to see how they look is reasonable when you're learning the camera; once you're used to it, you won't need to. Or, if you shoot RAW, don't even worry about those beyond the basics of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.

Once you understand the basics of what the various parameters do, you won't really need the LCD to double-check. A tiny screen is a tiny screen even if it were color-accurate. You'll want to review on a big screen anyway. The LCD is just for quick review.

Community
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mattdm
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  • I concur. I set my display to highlights or histogram and encourage others to do the same. Less "chmiping" and more prepping for the next shot! –  Feb 22 '19 at 20:12