D500

This camera is a speed demon- it locks focus and tracks amazingly fast. This is THE camera I´ve always wanted for BIF (Birds In Flight) and I´m having a blast with this camera, a Nikon 200-500mm 5.6 VR lens and a TC-14III tele-converter. I couldn´t be happier for capturing wildlife. I also own a Z7, but for wildlife that moves, THIS is the bomb!

This camera is well built and produces outstanding images. I purchased this camera for sporting events. The ergonomics for handling the camera are excellent. I was leery of using a crop sensor camera; but I have no worries now. I like the extra reach the cropped sensor provides. I shoot at the race track a lot and once it gets later into the night I have no worries pushing the ISO to 12,800.

If you can not afford the D5 this is the camera you need for any action photography.

Wow! That is putting it mildly, this camera is so far ahead of my D750 for action photography, I could kick myself for waiting so long to buy. A good friend owns the D500 and we shoot a lot of wildlife together. You may think 6 frames per second verses 10 frames per second is no big deal or lighting fast focus is not that much faster. You would be wrong. This D500 is crazy fast, I have some woodpecker photos that I have never been able to capture till I bought the D500. Love this camera especially with the 200/500 mm lens.

I love the D500. Have had it for about one month and so far have been using it to capture flying birds and grandson playing soccer. The camera is great. The 10 shots per second with a buffer of 200 really works well as does the auto focus locking onto the subject almost immediately. Also really love the two buttons to control rear button focus. Am using Grp auto focus on one button and 3D spot focus on the other. Works well. Grp focus for flying birds and 3D focus for soccer games.
Next up will be landscape photography - went out yesterday to shoot Georgetown Historical Waterfront pics and using both cards for the first time(primary RAW and secondary JPG. Now have to edit both the RAW and JPEG in lightroom to see the full capabilities of the camera.

I liked my D7000 but moving up to the D500 was a great experience. It was a shorter learning curve to adapt to the new interface/controls than I expected, knowing the operation and applying them are two different things of course! Its fun to learn but advise to get a ´´Mastering the D500´´ or similar book to rapidly get you up to speed if you are an amateur like myself., the manual is a bit too concise. The 10fps was very helpful for some indoor soccer photography I did recently.
I take one star off due to the battery life. Its improved over the last few charges but my D7000 seemed to last forever, now I´´m wondering if I´ll need to buy a back-up.

Amazing. That´s all I need to say. This is not only the best camera I´ve ever owned, but it´s one of the nicest pieces of technology (of any sort) I´ve ever laid my hands on. This truly blurs the line between consumer and professional. Love it. Where have you been, indeed...

I moved from a Nikon D5500 to the D500 after researching ALL cameras very carefully. The DX or FX argument didn´t hold water for the kind of photography I´m interested in. The D500 is a very rich and capable camera. It took some time to learn enough to stop the frustration and gain any kind of feeling of control. In time the results grew in quality and predictability. It can do so much! The trick is in telling it what you want in a way you both understand.
After a year with the D500, the learning goes on and on. With each shoot I´m finding something new. The satisfaction with the results grows out of the initial frustrations. It´s a great camera. At this price point, I believe it´s the best.

I have been shooting digital photography since buying a Nikon D200 in 2006. That camera is still serving today, but interests in types of subjects caused me to expand to full frame in 2017 with first a D810, then a D850, which are both wonderful cameras. (I needed both more wide angle capability and better low light performance.) The eventual result, though, was that when I was shooting DX, I found myself wanting to use functions that just weren´t available when the D200 was manufactured.

I had resisted buying the D500 because there was such emphasis on its being a wildlife and sports camera, because of its high frame rate. I don´t shoot either of those genres, so I ruled it out. But I finally came to the point that something had to be done, so went shopping at my local camera store.

What I found was that the D500 is a virtual (DX) copy of the D850 in terms of control locations, menu structure, and operation. It also felt perfect in my hands...not at all too heavy, even with my Gold Ring AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G IF-ED lens.

I´ve had this camera for just a little over a month now, and it has far exceeded my expectations. I shoot both JPEG and raw, and take a lot of care setting all of my cameras up for the best starting image possible, even those that are going to receive post processing later. I find this very easy to do with the D500, and find the overall character of images coming out of the camera to be indistinguishable from those produced from an identically set up D850. The fact that I can set these cameras (as well as my D810) to produce ´identical´ images out of the camera is very important to me.

The resolution of the D500 is just under 21MP. A lot of folks point to this as a reason to select the D7200 or D7500 instead. Those are both fine cameras, but the difference in a ´´contact print´´ from a 21 MP image and a 24MP image is just about three quarters of an inch on the long side and half an inch on the short side. For me, that´s not nearly enough to give up all of the other benefits of the D500.

A big factor in my choice of the D500 is that it provides the choice for Highlight Weighted Metering. I´m not sure that any of the other current DX camera choices offer this option. This metering mode provides the ability to guard against blown out highlights anywhere in the frame while providing maximum room for capturing shadow detail. It´s like ETTR (Exposing to the Right), except that a very usable image is available straight out of the camera. And it´s a whole lot easier than manual ETTR techniques.

Finally, low light performance of the D500 is excellent. It approaches that of the D810 and the D850, which is a lot to say for any DX camera. And I don´t know if it is because of the metering system, the focusing system (which is among the very best), or the Expeed processor, but the D500 will really show off the benefit of your best lenses. I have used my 18-200mm DX zoom with good results, but an outstanding lens like the 17-55mm f2.8 mentioned above produces by far the best results. You may want to develop a plan for lens upgrades when you move to the D500.

The D500 has been available for a while now. I don´t know what Nikon´s plans may be for it. But in my experience, it is and will remain an excellent camera choice regardless of what might happen in the future. And it is far, far more than just a wildlife and sports camera. It is a great all-around camera no matter what you shoot...even if you never rotate the exposure control dial to ´´Continuous.´´

After moving up from the D-200 to the D-300, upon its release, I´ve been loyal the the D-300, it was a real work horse and I still have 2 of them in my stable. The D-500 is more than a worthy successo to the D-300, it is in an entirely different class, The auto-focus, ISO sensitivity and white balance are best in class and not only a true leap forward from the prior DX flagship, it is the best of the cropped format SLR´s, period. The build is rugged and well suited for wildlife. You won´t be disappointed.