Autumn Whispers at Koishikawa Botanical Garden with the Nikon D610

As I feel autumn deepening day by day, I visited the Koishikawa Botanical Garden this time to capture the early signs of autumn. In the garden, the autumn leaves had just begun to show a subtle hint of color. The ginkgo and London plane trees are also starting to turn yellow, and I imagine the autumn hues will deepen more and more with each passing day.

As a facility of the University of Tokyo, this botanical garden is the birthplace of modern botany in Japan and continues to serve as an active site for botanical research. Spending about three hours allows you to leisurely enjoy and photograph the main gate, the autumn foliage avenue, the Japanese garden, and the greenhouses.

While the red maples still have some way to go, giant trees such as the London plane and tulip trees, along with the historical ginkgo tree where plant spermatozoa were discovered, were turning a beautiful yellow.

Inside the greenhouse, plants like the West Indian jasmine (Ixora) were also blooming with lovely flowers.

It was a truly wonderful experience to take photos while quietly enjoying the arrival of autumn.

Why the D610 now?
For this outing, I shot with a casual setup consisting of the Nikon D610—released 13 years ago—alongside the 24-85mm and 70-300mm lenses. Both the body and lenses were in like-new condition, and I was able to put together this full-frame system for under 100,000 yen in total. At this price point nowadays, you couldn't even buy a mirrorless body alone.

My current system centers around the D850 and D750, paired with "holy trinity" (f/2.8) and f/4 zoom lenses. However, I had been curious about the D610, 24-85mm, and 70-300mm as a lightweight, full-frame system that I could easily take out for casual strolls.

The D610 is equipped with the Expeed 3 image processing engine, the same engine found in the higher-end D4. I feel it is an engine that produces very natural and honest rendering. Compared to the D850, D750, or subsequent Z-mount models, you do need to be slightly mindful of the upper ISO limits when shooting in low light. The D610’s max ISO is 6400, and in my experience, up to around ISO 2500 is completely usable. However, once you go beyond that, color noise starts to appear, which is where you feel its age a bit.

As for the lenses, both deliver wonderfully crisp, edge-to-edge rendering. With the 70-300mm, there is naturally some softness at the edges when shooting wide open near 300mm, but stopping down just a little results in remarkably sharp images. Both lenses pair exceptionally well with the D610's 24-megapixel sensor, to the point where at a glance, you can hardly tell the images apart from those taken with current Z-mount lenses.

Achieving this level of optical performance for under 100,000 yen is truly unbeatable in terms of cost performance.

For anyone who wants to take up photography seriously as a hobby without spending a fortune, I believe this combination is the absolute best choice.

The fact that it is "lightweight" is also a major plus. It is also very helpful that the battery is compatible with my D850 and D750.

Another great point is the shutter sound—it is very crisp and snappy, giving the photographer a wonderful, tactile sense of "actually taking pictures." While the shutter sounds of the D850 and D750 are also nice, the D610’s has a slightly higher pitch and a more mechanical feel to it.

If your main focus is on still photography like landscapes and flowers—and you don't care much about Wi-Fi connectivity (which the D610 lacks), high-speed action tracking, Eye AF, or video—the D610 is still more than capable of holding its own today.