Nikon D500 Announced

Scottwdw

Scottwdw

Member
It's the D400 many Nikon DX users have been wanting from Nikon for..well...years.

Details can be found here: Nikon D500

Howie and I have already been swooning over it. After thinking about it, I put a pre-order in. Hey, it was the camera I keep saying I wanted so it seems stupid not to get it. :rolleyes: I found I missed the 1.5x crop for my sports photography when using the 70-200mm f/2.8 lens for hockey and the 80-400mm f/3.5-f/5.6 lens for field sports and wildlife. Oh, yeah, it is rated at 10 frames per second, has built-in Wi-Fi and a dedicated AF-ON button.
 
Even as a Sony shooter, it gives me great hope and is awesome to see. There's been a general fear that APS-C wasn't getting much support from many manufacturers - and as I wonder what I will replace my current old Sony DSLR with, I keep varying between a mirrorless body and adapting A-mount lenses over (which works if I go with Sony full-frame mirrorless, but adaptability on APS-C bodies is no good on the A6000 for continuous autofocus), or considering another DSLR which means either Sony A-mount A77II, which isn't overwhelmingly tempting, or going to another mount which pretty much meant Canon 7DII as the only reasonably semi-pro AF DSLR available. So this announcement gives me a viable second option if I need to switch mounts on the DSLR side, while I wait a bit longer to see if Sony decides to solve the AF adaptability issue on a next-gen APS-C sensor mirrorless body similar to what they did on the A7RII, so I could just get the adapter for my Alpha lenses and get shooting. If not, the D500 looks very tasty as a next DSLR replacement alongside my A6000.
 
Decisions, decisions, @zackiedawg You'd probably should just be patient. While I was not, I had a pressing need to keep working with Nikon's cameras with all the sports photography I do. To be honest, after all is said and done, I've swapped out the D700/D7100 combo for a D750/D500 one. Which will suit me for a many years to come.

Next up will be a good UWA lens for the D750. I found the Tokina very heavy in September. Like the Nikon 16-35 but it's twice as expensive. Oy! :rolleyes:
 
I had the chance to handle both the D5 and D500 tonight at a Nikon presentation at the local camera store. Both are pretty darn nice. We weren't allowed to use our own memory cards, but we could take shots and look at the results on the LCD screens. The D500 at ISO 51,200 (the fastest native speed) looked pretty grainy, but I have nothing to compare it to. And of course they were pre-production models, so things might change a little when they're finally released in a few months.

One feature that I was worried about was the touch-screen feature on the LCD screen. I have problems with my nose pressing the buttons on the back of my camera, turning on the LCD screen when I'm trying to compose a shot. The last thing I need is for the LCD screen to react to any body part that touches it inadvertently. In reality, the touch function only works in playback or live-view mode, or when entering text data on the menu. I believe it can be disabled altogether as well.

I heard someone ask about the Q setting on the mode dial. It stands for Quiet mode, which will be useful when we're all shooting Nemo at Pixelmania. (Don't want to annoy guests with the constant shutter noise, do we?)

My biggest complaint is the lack of accessory compatibilty. My D300 and D700 can share batteries, battery grip, memory cards and cable release. The D500 has a different grip, different battery and different memory card. So If I get one, everything I own except lenses becomes obsolete and must be replaced. (Not that I plan on dumping my D700 anytime soon.)

Still, it's tempting. I'll certainly look at prices and probably rent one later this year to try before I buy.
 
I did some research, comparing prices on D500 accessories to those for a D300/D300s.

Batteries are the only thing in the same ballpark; an EN-EL15 costs $45, only $5 more than an EN-EL3.

The new MB-D17 battery grip at $400 is almost twice the cost of an MB-D10.

While the D500 can use SD cards, Nikon is pushing XQD cards which, for 32 GB, range in price from $56 to $110. Good quality 32 GB SD cards run around $25, while CF cards are around $35.

So that $2000 price tag on the body is only the tip of the iceberg.
 
Nikon rarely makes it easy when upgrading within its models. Battery grips are the worst. I use a third party grip ($80) for the D750. I refuse to give Nikon money for a grip that only gives you a little extra battery and ease of switching between landscape and portrait orientations.

As for memory cards, I will be biting the bullet there. I figure one 32GB XQD card will do me with backup files going to the SD slot. For sports, I shoot JPEG and figure speed at the SD slot won't be an issue with the large buffer of the D500. I have an arsenal of 16GB SDHC cards. BTW, the $110 SONY 32GB XQD card comes with an USB reader.

As I said in the OP, this was the camera I begged Nikon to make and need for my sports photography. Won't find out until it shows up which, at the earliest, won't be until mid-April, if it is as good as the specs indicate.
 
I'll admit I've been focusing on some of the negatives, but it's a pretty impressive piece of equipment. For example, of the 153 auto-focus points, 99 are cross-type (which are the more accurate ones). They said it will auto-focus down to -4 EV, which the rep compared to nautical twilight, which means "not a lot of light."

The D5 has one real advantage with memory cards: If you buy the CF version, it can later be converted to the SD/XQD version. It's not a do-it-yourself task, but at least there's an option. Why don't amateurs get the same consideration?

And I'd like to know why both the full-frame D5 and DX D500 have the same megapixel spec. Shouldn't the D500 have fewer? If I were designing it, I'd just trim the edges off a D5 sensor to get a DX-sized one, not cram those pixels closer together.

There I go, being negative again.
 
Happy to report my D500 is on its way. Should have it tomorrow. Got lots of lacrosse action coming up in May so I should be able to give it a proper shakedown before my paying gig in June starts.

The SONY XQD card with reader price has dropped to $75 as of this posting.
 
Finally got out with the D500 tonight covering a high school boy's lacrosse game. I used the Nikon recommended AF settings for soccer which I figured was similar to lacrosse.

Here are a few photos all taken with a Nikon D500 and Nikon 80-400VR AF lens. Note, not only was this my first time out with the D500, these photos are some of the first I processed in Lightroom CC so hopefully I did okay on that front.

i-4djMMW2-L.jpg

1/1000s, f/4.8, ISO 280, EV +0.3, 95mm (142mm DX) FL, cropped

i-7twhsBs-L.jpg

1/1000s, f/5.3, ISO 720, EV +0.3, 280mm (420mm DX) FL

i-brHmfPZ-L.jpg

1/2000s, f/5, ISO 4000, EV +0.3, 130mm (195mm DX) FL

i-BzTzLqB-L.jpg

1/1000s, f/5.6, ISO 5000, EV +0.3, 400mm (600mm DX) FL
 
The look good, Scott. I'm tempted to rent a D500 for the Reading Air Show just to try it out. (Unless, of course, you're willing to send yours down with @ExploringWDW.)
 
ddindy said:
The look good, Scott. I'm tempted to rent a D500 for the Reading Air Show just to try it out. (Unless, of course, you're willing to send yours down with @ExploringWDW.)
Click to expand...

:eek: You're funny!

I really, really want to go to that show but the baseball gig I have gets in the way. I will have to take my break in June instead of over the July 4th holiday next year.
 
I got my D500 last Friday and heading to the huge airshow in Ft Lauderdale this weekend. Really looking forward to putting it through it's paces during that show.
 
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I got my first outing with the D500 this past weekend at the airshow in Fort Lauderdale and I'm indeed impressed. It's still going to take a little getting used to how to set it up best for various types of shots but A few general first impressions:

- Battery life was much, much better than expected. I shot over 10,000 frames (more below) on Saturday and went through less than 2 batteries the whole day. I’m guessing this is because most of them were not displayed on the LCD which is the biggest battery draw. I normally get somewhere around 1,300 on my D810 so this was a really pleasant surprise.

- Focusing performance under these conditions was amazing. I was using the current generation Nikon 80-400 throughout the day and it held focus on fast moving jets and jet teams without any issues at all. The flight line was a little further off shore than I expected so I dropped the 1.4x Extender on pretty early on Saturday and it didn’t seem to do anything to the focus performance. I tracked along with extended sequences of planes changing direction and climbing to altitude and it had no trouble at all keep up with focus. I had high expectations here and it met and exceeded those.

- I was shooting the whole time with the newest generation of 2933x Lexar XQD cards and the burst rate shooting was kind of insane. It kept up so well I really never felt like I was running out of buffer firing away at 10fps. The result of that however was 10,000+ shots on SAT and another 8,000+ on SUN. I’ve got a whole lot of deleting to do in LR now to cull the junk or all the shots that are essentially duplicates. This was the first use so I just kind of let it rip. Now that I’m more comfortable with it, I will not go nearly as crazy with the shutter button at the next airshow in June but it’s nice to know I can when I need to

A couple of samples from the weekend.

RCAF CF-18 Hornet by Don Sullivan, on Flickr

US Air Force Thunderbirds by Don Sullivan, on Flickr

US Air Force Thunderbirds by Don Sullivan, on Flickr
 
I can tell you from using the old AF version of the 80-400mm...I need the AF-S version with the D500. I get more OOF shots than I want and it's mostly because of the slow focusing of the lens.
 
Here's a couple from last night. Had great late day lighting and cranked up the shutter speed to 1/4000s with ISOs under 1K.

Even at that shutter speed the ball and stick still have motion blur.

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Cool pic of the night.

i-RgC2NqF-L.jpg
 
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