Roger Cicala gives Nikon D610 a clean bill of health

Beta testing will rarely pick up these things, since beta testers are photographers. Bench tests of durability, like running the shutter for 50, 100, 150K cycles will look for shutter issues. Leaking for dust or moisture will test for that, putting camera in the proper environment. Each test will look for definite aspects. The camera doesn’t have a dust leaking issue, meaning it would not collect outside dust while using it normally (not 2, 3, 5, 10K shutter cycles). The problem was not that “Nikon uses us as beta testers”, it was after it was detected, they were not as careful as they should have been, but that is not certainly the first case in the industry, nor will be last. But they have learned a lesson or two from it since the D600, which was (and still is) the best entry-level FF dslr, suffered severely in sales. They will recover some sales with the D610, but still, there is a sour taste for many with this event re Nikon, they better be very careful with their future cameras.