Nikon Releases D610 - Upgraded version of the D600

Nikon this morning released a slightly upgraded version of the D600, adding a new shutter mechanism, slightly faster fps, and a few other features to the not-so-old D600 model. The rumours are that Nikon has done this to address the oil spot issue that apparently had been a major problem to D600 owners. While not a major upgrade the D610 seems like an excellent camera, and I still wonder if in some ways this would be preferable to the D800, especially for using out and about. The big issue I always had with it though (actually it's a small issue, but a big one for me) is that you couldn't set the centre button on the D600 to zoom to 1:1 on playback, like you can on all of Nikon's other pro level cameras. I always felt that this was a deliberate decision to put the camera in the consumer or pro-sumer bracket, which is really annoying as it's just a software feature. However, Nikon did add the 1:1 zoom option to the D7100 (it was missing on the 7000) so maybe they've seen the light and the 610 will get the feature.

If anyone out there manages to get some hands on time with a 610 over the coming weeks, I'd love to find out the answer to this question. In the mean time, the next big announcement that I'm looking forward to is the Sony full frame E-Mount camera which, according to rumours, should be announced in the next two weeks. This could be a huge game changer for mirrorless cameras so I'm quite excited about that one.