A Wildlife Photographer Perspective on the Nikon D500

On this video wildlife and nature photographer Steve Perry (from backcountrygallery) takes a very close look at the new D500 from Nikon, comparing it to his D7200 and D810 and giving some interesting usage tips based on his experience with the camera.

The D500 is a perfect camera for a nature, wildlife and especially bird photographer such as Steve Perry, it has a new AF system with very fast frame rate and a very large buffer among many other changes.

According to Perry the AF system is probably Nikon’s biggest success with this camera, being a leap forward from anything else in Nikon’s current line (and identical or at least very very similar to the top of the line D5).

Unlike the guys at DPreview who actually liked Nikon’s Automatic AF Fine Tune Feature of the D5/D500 (see here), Perry’s experience was not that positive and he feels that a normal fine tune is still a much better way.

One thing Perry didn’t really look into was video – and you can find that on Chris Niccolls and Jordan Drake review of the D500 including some other points. However for the most part Perry seems to feel that the D500 is the best camera a wildlife photographer can get (surely for around $2000).

A quick reminder of the Nikon D500 main specs:

  • Sensor: DX (APS-C), 20.9MP CMOS sensor.
  • Sensitivity: 50 –51,200 ISO.
  • Processor – EXPEED 5.
  • AF: 153 AF points including 99 cross type points (up to -4EV).
  • Video: 4K @30p.
  • Continuous shooting – 10 fps.
  • Memory – SD and XQD.
  • Connectivity – SnapBridge (Wi-Fi + Bluetooth) capabilities.
  • Shutter – 30-1/8000s.
  • 3.2 inch touch LCD with tilt – 2.359k dots.
  • Price: $2000.
You can find many more previews and reviews on our Photography review section here on LensVid. We have a special page dedicated to all of Perry ‘s videos which you can find here.
Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *