Nikon D500

[stuart]

Anyone else here going for this? I got the D7100 when it came out actually on launch day, having had the D300, and while it is a good camera, the buffer or lacktherof almost can be annoying at times.

The specs on it, specifically the 10fps will be excellent for my football(soccer) stuff. While my D4S has the 70-200 on it, i often use my D7100 with my Sigma 150-500 leaving it about 400mm-ish and it does pretty well - but that extra fps and buffer space might just get a few more usable pics per game.

I am still tempted for the 300 f4 Nikon do (anything more is a lottery win job) as just has that bit reach and faster than the Sigma and cropping pics on that would easily do for print / web use.

 

[donsullivan]

I had been considering adding a D7200 to my bag last fall but when the D500 was announced in Jan it was clear it was exactly what I was looking for. I do a lot of airshow shooting in the spring and get tired of missing so many shots on fast moving stuff like Thunderbirds and Blue Angels where precise timing is needed to catch the key crossover shots of a show. The burst rate on my D750 & D810 is so slow I miss way too many shots. I also want to start doing some more wildlife shooting and the extra effective reach on my FX lenses is an added bonus.

I took custody of mine last Friday and while I had a little play with it last weekend, I'll get my first real test at a huge air show in Fort Lauderdale this weekend. I did some quick testing with a really fast XQD card and it feels like the buffer never fills while pounding away at 10fps 'almost' infinitely; It's kind of amazing. In my case, my go-to lens will be my Nikon 80-400. After some initial tests last weekend it feels like it will hold up really well. But, with that burst rate I need to get much better at deleting in camera or I'll have a standing order for more hard drives from Amazon.

 

[donsullivan]

So I had my first real outing with the D500 this past weekend at the Fort Lauderdale Airshow and I have to say I'm extremely impressed with the performance of the camera. I was using a Nikon 80-400 lens pretty much the whole day and lots of time with a 1.4x Extender as well since they kept a lot of the planes further off the beach than I expected. I've only just begun to cull through the mountain of shots to delete all the junk but here are a few first impressions

- The focusing performance was outstanding under those conditions. I set it up most of the time with all 153 focus points active so it could find the plane anywhere it was and it did not disappoint at all. Focus tracking was fantastic though despite all of the rapid movement tracking fast moving planes across the sky
- The burst rate is kind of insane and something I need to learn to throttle a little bit. Once you get rolling the buffer seems almost endless. I ended up with 18,000+ shots for the weekend. Now that I've got them all off the cards, the next few days will be spent culling the junk (there is a lot) that I'll never use and and getting ready to truly look at the shots and decide what I'll process to post.
- Battery performance was really surprising. I'd read some reports of battery life issues but I shot 10K+ frames on Saturday and went thru less than 2 batteries. I'm guessing that is partly because most of those shots were never displayed on the screen which is the greatest battery burner

I've only used it under these conditions so far, but for me these are the most taxing conditions I ever shoot under and I could not be happier. Once I get through the culling process I'll post a few shots from the show here as reference.

A really quick selection/quick edit samples from the d500 this weekend.

US Air Force Thunderbirds by Don Sullivan, on Flickr

US Air Force Thunderbirds by Don Sullivan, on Flickr

US Air Force Thunderbirds by Don Sullivan, on Flickr

 

[blueboxdoctor]

So I had my first real outing with the D500 this past weekend at the Fort Lauderdale Airshow and I have to say I'm extremely impressed with the performance of the camera. I was using a Nikon 80-400 lens pretty much the whole day and lots of time with a 1.4x Extender as well since they kept a lot of the planes further off the beach than I expected. I've only just begun to cull through the mountain of shots to delete all the junk but here are a few first impressions

- The focusing performance was outstanding under those conditions. I set it up most of the time with all 153 focus points active so it could find the plane anywhere it was and it did not disappoint at all. Focus tracking was fantastic though despite all of the rapid movement tracking fast moving planes across the sky
- The burst rate is kind of insane and something I need to learn to throttle a little bit. Once you get rolling the buffer seems almost endless. I ended up with 18,000+ shots for the weekend. Now that I've got them all off the cards, the next few days will be spent culling the junk (there is a lot) that I'll never use and and getting ready to truly look at the shots and decide what I'll process to post.
- Battery performance was really surprising. I'd read some reports of battery life issues but I shot 10K+ frames on Saturday and went thru less than 2 batteries. I'm guessing that is partly because most of those shots were never displayed on the screen which is the greatest battery burner

I've only used it under these conditions so far, but for me these are the most taxing conditions I ever shoot under and I could not be happier. Once I get through the culling process I'll post a few shots from the show here as reference.

A really quick selection/quick edit samples from the d500 this weekend.

US Air Force Thunderbirds by Don Sullivan, on Flickr

US Air Force Thunderbirds by Don Sullivan, on Flickr

US Air Force Thunderbirds by Don Sullivan, on Flickr

That last picture is pretty awesome. I've been trying to figure out my next camera (currently have the entry level D3300). The D500 caught my attention and so did the D7200. However, it seems for the long term, the D500 won't become too old anytime soon in terms of technology. Right now I'm focusing on new lenses (thinking of a Nikon AF-S 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR and there's also that new 70-300mm coming out for DX format cameras later this month I think), but pretty cool to see some pictures with the D500.