Nikon D3400 review

Build and handling

• Polycarbonate construction
• Design very similar to D3300
• Logical button placement

The D3400 is designed to be small and lightweight, but Nikon has ensured there is enough grip to get hold of the camera. There's also enough space on the rear for the thumb to rest without knocking into any controls – not something every camera manages to provide. 

At just 445g with its battery and memory card in place, the model is one of the lightest DSLRs around. That's only 9g heavier than Canon's EOS Rebel T100 / EOS 4000D, which essentially makes them equal. It's also over 200g lighter than Pentax's K70 model, although that does offer sensor-based image stabilisation and weather-sealing, both of which are missing here.

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Naturally, such a small and light body does have its downsides. Mounting anything but Nikon's smallest and lightest lenses makes for an imbalanced partnership, for example, and it's easy to get your nose in the way of the menu selector pad on the rear which can make adjusting the focusing point tricky. The camera also lacks the build quality of its D5xxx siblings like the D5600, which is to be expected given its lower billing.

Still, there are many positives elsewhere. A soft rubber around the grip improves the model's feel in the hand, and this is complemented with the same finish on the thumb rest. The mode dial on the top of the camera is easy to grip and rotate, and while buttons are somewhat flat and lack much travel they are reasonably sized and well marked. 

The customisable Fn button to the side of the lens mount is very welcome, particularly in the absence of a direct control for ISO, although this can be assigned three alternative functions. Also nice to find is a dedicated drive mode button, which you'll no doubt find useful if you tend to call upon burst-shooting and self-timer options with any frequency.

Autofocus

• 11-point AF, 1 cross-type AF point
• AF-assist illuminator
• Slow Live View focusing

In line with many other APS-C based rivals, the camera's 11-point Multi CAM 1000 AF system covers a healthy proportion of the frame, the points arranged in a diamond-like formation. This is essentially unchanged from previous models, although the new AF-P 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR kit lens has been engineered to provide fast and quiet focus.

It is indeed very quiet, with just a slight burr as it works, and something that's easily masked by most ambient noise. Overall speed is also very good, with the system bringing subjects to focus as promptly as expected when shooting in good light. Naturally this slows in poorer light, although the AF assist lamp is relatively bright and readily springs into play.

Although only the central AF point is cross type for enhanced sensitivity, the points immediately above and below it also prove to be more sensitive than the other surrounding points. I found this triplet could focus on very low-contrast subjects where the other eight could not.

When set to track a moving subject the system is capable of keeping up as a subject moves around the scene, although as points are positioned much further apart from each other than on cameras with a more densely packed array, it can often lose subjects if they don't occupy enough of the frame to begin with.

There's a slight focusing slowdown in live view, although a comparison with a similarly-sized Nikkor lens with an SWM motor shows the newer AF-P version to be both faster and quieter. In good light it still manages to find the subject without too much hesitation, although during this review there were occasions in poorer light where the system could not find focus at all. Still, for studio and other tripod-based shooting, this is completely usable.

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