D7500

Before I start, these are simply my own impressions. I was once a professional photographer way back in the days of film and photographed over 600 weddings, as well as sports teams and schools. Nowadays I am just an amateur who sells prints once in awhile. I am also a recently retired economics teacher and in my quest to upgrade from my excellent, but outdated D7000, I applied the principles of wants vs needs, trade-offs, opportunity costs, and cost benefits.

Realizing the no camera will give one exactly what they want, I borrowed the requirements down. My two main criteria were higher ISO performance and more accurate focus. I do a lot of bird in flight, and both are essential. It came down to the D7200, the D7500, and the D500. The D7200 already being two years out, I ruled it out. The D500 fit my needs, and a few wants, but the price tag was a bit steep. The D7500 seemed the best fit, and after trying it for a couple of days I believe I made the right choice.

ISO- While the D7000 had an upper limit of ISO 1600 before degrading, I now feel quite comfortable at 3200 which helps with the 180 f/2.8 for birds. I will test at higher when I do some Milky Way shots next week.

Focus- Spot on, fast and accurate. I can track a bird quite easily.

Exposure- Amazing. The color rendition and exposure are so good I don´t have to do any tweaking. Even shooting a bird against a bright blue sky the metering handle it.

Eight frames per second is fast. The shutter is quite sensitive and I will easily shoot a sequence when only one is needed, but they delete.

The shutter is much quite quieter than the D7000 and makes a sweet sound like my old Contax.

The negatives that people are sounding off on don´t bother me. One card slot is okay, I never utilized the second slot before, and I am not doing anything that a card failure would cause a catastrophic loss. No battery grip is okay too. I have one for the older camera, but never used it. I am so old that reaching over with my finger feels natural. Not being able to meter with old lenses is okay too, I don´t have any.

The bottom line is that this camera meets my needs, and then some, giving me a good return on investment.

So far, there is nothing I dislike about this camera. I upgraded from a D7100 (and I´m saying upgraded because, contrarily to what some people may erroneously think, it is an upgrade). I too read some negative feedback, mainly about the single card slot versus 2. But this is far from being an issue for me. I never used a battery grip before, so I don´t care. I do use several batteries though.

The body feels very good in my hands. I love the dedicated ISO button and it´s so easy to toggle between auto ISO and regular ISO and then select an ISO value. I consider this a huge update.

I do like the touch screen, something completely new for me. As far as the autofocus is concerned, it´s very good. It can autofocus much better in low light.

I love the high ISO rendition. There is no question that this is an upgrade from the D7100 I used to shoot with. I can´t wait to shoot the night sky with this camera.

I am eager to use the radio trigger capability with this camera. I am waiting for the WR-R10 to be available to use with my SB-5000. I consider this as a huge upgrade too. It´s not like using the optical trigger didn´t work, but I sometimes had trouble with getting the ML-3 to work.

I have not yet used the faster frame rate for moving subjects. I will do when I get a chance. This can only be a bonus coming from a D7100.

I haven´t yet used the video capability on this camera. But I like to make videos and I really, really appreciate that this camera has power aperture. I have wished for this for a long time.

For me, this is a perfect camera. I considered the D500, but for my type of photography it was an overkill. I like shooting fast moving subjects, but it´s not the biggest part of my photography.

Finally, I do notice a much better color rendition with this camera. So far, I don´t have to modify any of the colors after I view my images in Capture NX-D. (I only use the Nikon software and nothing else). I can comfortably say that the color rendition is more accurate with this camera than with my previous cameras, even thought he D7100 produced nice colors. And I really like the auto picture control.

The D7500 is very responsive. The shutter is fast and there is no lag. In fact, I accidentally touched it several times only slightly when holding the camera, and it fired!

Pro or not, this is a very nice camera, and the best for me so far.

Finally in my hands. Easy to use and very powerful. I loved.

I´ve always been a fan of Nikon DSLRs and I obviously felt bad when I saw a bunch of negative reviews about the D7500 even before it was out in the market.
After using the D5100 for last 6 years, I wanted to upgrade to a more professional DSLR, so despite all the criticisms I did preorder the D7500 and received it just 3 days back. After almost 20 hours of rigorous testing, I´m happy to say that I absolutely love this camera.
The camera feels great in hand, super easy to use in different positions and angles and has a robust and quality feel to it. The D7500 also has a great battery life. I don´t know why did Nikon say that it can accommodate only 980 shots per charge, as this was one of the most criticized points. I took random shots on continuous high for almost 8-10 hours, on a full charge and surprisingly I got 1600 shots form it!!! (To be noted, I kept the camera on airplane mode as I don´t use SnapBridge usually and I only use is for wireless photography when needed. I also keep the screen brightness as low as possible as it is more energy efficient and doesn´t strain the eyes. Lastly, since I just shoot on manual mode, I didn´t use the pop up flash even once.) Next, after upgrading from the D5100, this camera, with its 8 fps burst mode, such a large buffer and awesome shutter sound, feels like a machine gun in hand. Inheriting most of its features from the flagship D500, the D7500 also has very good low light performance, super-fast auto focusing and produces clear and crisp photos under any light condition. I would have definitely liked to have 2 SD card slots on this camera, but since I´m not a professional photographer, this isn´t a deal breaker for me. Moreover, with a good quality SD card, card failures can be avoided and obviously with the SnapBridge functionality, photos can be transferred to our smartphones almost immediately. The only thing I would have wanted Nikon to provide in the D7500 is the provision for a battery grip. But still, since it has a good battery life, I won´t worry too much about this and hopefully, soon there will be 3rd party vertical battery grips out in the market like they have it for the D5500. Last but not the least, the large tilting touchscreen adds a great appeal to the camera body, the display is clear and has super responsive touch functionality. Though I would have loved the vari-angle touch screen like on my D5100, I´m absolutely enjoying the new experience with the D7500.
I´m absolutely charmed to see that, even while going through a rough patch, Nikon produced such a great and quality DSLR and I´m optimistic that Nikon will soon find its way back to the top again.

Thank you so much Nikon, good luck and a very happy 100th anniversary!