Greetings! Anyone here using a battery grip for the D780? I’ve been looking but I can only find it on eBay and it’s been shipped from China. Any recommendations? Thanks in advance.
Donovan
When Nikon builds a camera and has a battery grip as an option, there always is a contact block for letting the grip communicate the button presses from the grip to the camera. Common examples are Nikon D300, D600, D810, D850. Even with compatible grips for such models, you will have duplicate dials for portrait mode, a lockable shooting button, a duplicate AF-ON button and a duplicate multi-selector with central OK button. Camera will work just as effectively in landscape and in portrait mode.
The D780 does not have such a contact block, so the grip communicates with the camera using the battery compartment, which has no extra contacts for letting the eventual extra buttons communicate with the camera (and you will have no extra buttons, maybe only a portrait mode shooting button). As such, in order to be able to use a portrait mode button, you will have to use an extra small cable to connect the grip to the remote connector. This allows only for basic operation (you'll have half press focussing but you will lose the AF-ON focussing function in portrait mode, no dedicated dials, no multi-selector), so the only value of a third-party battery grip is for extending the number of actuations you can achieve before changing battery packs.
So before opening your wallet you have to consider what functions you will need from a grip which was not natively integrated with the camera. Possibly the answer will be that you don't need one!
Ciao from Massimo
