My Take on the D500

I have received quite a few people asking me to offer my thoughts on the D500 since I switched to it from the D7200. Now that I have had the D500 for awhile, with many chances to shoot with it, here's my own take on it.

D500 Pros
- way more sharp keepers when shooting at fps. With the D7200 I may get 3 to 5 out of 10. With the D500 I am getting 9 to 10.
- 10 fps (can be useful at times for birds or flight shooting)
- wider spread of focus points
- built in AF fine tune (can be useful in a pinch)
- appears to be slightly cleaner at higher ISO
- better more rugged build
- articulating screen (not something I am likely to ever use, but probably a plus for some)
- XQD card slot (not a pro for me, but likely is for others)

D500 Cons
- Twice as expensive as D7200
- Battery Grip (at $599) is outrageously priced here in Canada
- 4 less MP's than D7200
- much bigger and heavier than D7200
- no built in flash (I really miss having a built-in flash)
- I would have preferred two SD card slots (i.e. no XQD card)
- EN-EL15 Li-ion20 battery life is about 60% of what it is with a D7200

There are likely other pros and cons that other people might use or need, but that's about it for me. At the end of the day, I really like the camera and I am happy I have it, but if my D7200 was as sharp as it should have been, I would have saved the money and kept the D7200. It remains to be seen if it is any better at flight shooting which I will test out this winter at the lagoon. I did try some Blue-eyed Darners in flight the other day and the AF was not locking on, or tracking the subject very well at all. For that subject, I found the "group" AF setting to be pretty much useless. I am not much of a BIF shooter, so most of the reasons to get a D500 are sort of wasted on me. For someone who does a lot of flight shooting, then I am sure for them the D500 is a huge improvement.

Cheers
Tim

Yeah the AF system is without rival and that includes Canon and even the D5 due to having AF sensors over the entire frame and it's insanely good hit rate. Like I said earlier, in Ecuador I did not have a single shot that missed focus, not just the hummingbird shots which have huge DOF due to shorter lenses and small apertures but also all the other birds which were often shot in very low light with an f/6.3 lens. On the 10 FPS, I find it a little too much in most situations and have changed it to 8. The built in AFFT doesn't work well in my opinion.

Tim Zurowski wrote: ... but if my D7200 was as sharp as it should have been, I would have saved the money and kept the D7200 ...

Tim,
What happen to your D7200?
I  thought you were very happy with it for your work.

EJ . . . . I agree with everything you say there. I too find the 10 fps to be too much most of the time. 90% of the time I use 6 fps set in the CL mode. I also agree that the built in AFFT is not great, which is why I said "in a pinch". I found that "sometimes" if I did it 5 or more times and it came within a range of 5 points, then it might be usable when in the field. With my 500 VR, I got between -5 four times and -1 one other time. With FoCal I got -7 three times straight. So if I had set it at -5 in the field, it would have been in the ballpark and usable, but I would still want to redo it properly when I get home. For the most part, it came out within 3-5 points of what I got doing it with FoCal almost every time.

KK . . . . .  I do not know what happened to my D7200, but suddenly I was not able to get sharp detailed images with it, no matter which lens I used. So I tested shooting with Mike Wooding's D7200 and it was as sharp as I could hope for, i.e. like my D7200 was when I first bought it. Unfortunately, it was out of warranty and I would have had to send it to Nikon Service to figure out what was happening with it. I was not prepared to do that because Nikon Canada Service is a joke and it likely would have cost me more than it was worth. I sold it and the grip for a loss and bought the D500. I thought about buying another D7200, but in the end chose to spend the additional cash and try the D500. In a perfect world, I was very happy with my D7200 (when it was sharp) and would have preferred to have kept it.

Tim, curious which option you selected for processing your NEF (raw) images. Did you try the DNG format?

Ron Day wrote:Tim, curious which option you selected for processing your NEF (raw) images. Did you try the DNG format?

Yes, I am converting to DNG then into ACR>CS6. I am having a tough time going with Adobe's monthly subscription, but I may give in at some point.

Sorry to hear your D7200 story, Tim!
On pp, I hate to keep both the NEF and DNG files hence I'm using the Capture NX-D for RAW conversion to 16-bit TIFF then PS CS6.

I don't keep the DNG files once I have processed the file in CS6. I just like ACR for RAW processing way better than NXD.

The D500 seems to be much better at keeping a fast moving bird in flight in sharp focus against a green background than the Canon 7D MK2.  From the sounds of it, Nikon put together a great AF system for the D500 which is supposed to compete with the 7D MK2 (although not really as Nikon always outdoes Canon - charge a bit more but you get more).

OntPhoto wrote:The D500 seems to be much better at keeping a fast moving bird in flight in sharp focus against a green background than the Canon 7D MK2.  From the sounds of it, Nikon put together a great AF system for the D500 which is supposed to compete with the 7D MK2 (although not really as Nikon always outdoes Canon - charge a bit more but you get more).

Having used both extensively, there is no comparison.  Note that the 7D2's AF system is an offshoot of the EOS 1Dx (not the 1Dx2) where the D500 is an offshoot of the much newer D5.

Any apprehensions I had about this camera have dissolved after three months of heavy use. The AF is remarkable in its quick focus acquisition and accuracy.

I have been using the d500 for some time and am very happy with the performance of the camera. I was hopeful that it would have two sd cards instead of the XQD, but the XQD cards seem to write faster. (Disappointed that Micron/Lexar is leaving that market to Sony) I was not getting as many sharp BIF images but purchased Steve Perry's e-book on the Nikon auto focus system and changed some things on camera which improved my success rate. I was the problem, not the camera. I had a d7200 but had issues with the buffer filling and that is why I changed to the d500.

calvin1calvin wrote:I had a d7200 but had issues with the buffer filling and that is why I changed to the d500.

In over two years using the D7200 and I never once had a buffer overrun issue.

Well, Tim
Then I guarantee you have not shot at sunrise at the Crane Ponds at Bosque. With that much action, to be able to capture the masses of Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes you need the buffer to clear quickly. This is not dependent on skill level. It is related to capturing the volume of action and scenes evolving before you. Buffers fill quickly and you will miss many opportunities if your buffer fills. It has happened to me countless times. It's also a good reason to use a very fast card.

Joe