Last November, I came up with a list of 5 cameras that Nikon should make to restore them to greatness. With the D500 that they’ve just announced, now that’s one less imaginery camera to worry about.
The 21-megapixel APS-C sensor DSLR is the successor to the D300s – and it’s about bloody time they updated it. The D300s was a DX DSLR for photographers who wanted a bit more va-va-voom without paying the single-digit DSLR kind of money. Let’s face it: the D7000, D7100, D7200 never really filled the gap.
It’s been a long wait, but good things come to those who wait apparently. And the D500 has got some top features that proves that Nikon is alive and kicking.
Don’t buy the D7200, buy this.
1) 10 FPS Burst with 79 Raw Image Buffer Depth
Having a 10 frames-per-second continous burst puts it level with what Canon’s 7D Mark II offers, but the 79 raw image buffer depth far exceeds the 31 raw images of the 7D II.
2) 153-AF Points
So the Canon 7D Mark II has 65 all cross type AF points. Nice. The D500 has 153-AF Points, 99 of them being cross type. That’s pretty impressive, right? Well that’s because it use the same autofocusing system as the newly-announced D5.
Who cares about the D5 when you have this?
3) 4K Video
Yep. That’s right. I remember a time not so long ago when Nikon didn’t do video mode very well. Well, maybe they still won’t do it well with the D500, but looky here – Nikon has put a 4K video mode in (with a 1080 60p option) one of their consumer DSLRs before Canon did. Nikon was quiet in 2015 but it is the quiet ones that you have to watch out for. Then there auto ISO smoothing to make ISO changes during recording smoother and a 3-axis electronic vibration reduction to create a smoother-looking video.
Yes, serious photographers do use tilty screens too.
4) Always On Wireless
It features ‘SnapBridge’ – kinda sounds like a combination of two card games – that allows the camera to always be connected wirelessly, doing away without the need to establish a connection everytime you need to use it. It uses Bluetooth to keep the camera connected to your smartphone constantly, which should in theory make transferring images quick and easy. Apparently, Nikon will be putting this into all future cameras that they release.
They all look the same, but here’s another image of the D500.
5) 0.7 More Megapixels Than The 7D Mark II!!!
You do the math: 20.9-megapixels of the D500 vs 20.2-megapixels of the 7D Mark II – imagine how much larger you can print those images! Or maybe don’t bother.
Still, there is every possibility that the D500 could shoot the better image. It certainly has a higher ISO capability: 100-51,200 ISO range that’s expandable to 50-1,640,000 ISO. The 7D Mark II goes up to ISO 25,600 (expanded).
It’s Gonna Be a Good One
I am really looking forward to testing this out. I don’t know who we have to sleep with to get our hands on one quick…I guess it’s either me, Lok or the Bloody Producer that will have to get busy then…
Pricing set at $2000, which is more than the $1.5k Canon 7D Mark II.
Further reading: Introducing the new Nikon D5.