A Wildlife Photographer Perspective On The Nikon D7500

On this video wildlife and nature photographer Steve Perry (from backcountrygallery) takes a very close look at the new D7500 from Nikon, comparing it to his D7200 and D500 and giving some interesting usage tips based on his experience with the camera especially in outdoor & wildlife type photography.

A while back we reviewed the Nikon D7200 and last year we reviewed (and than awarded the camera of the year) to the D500. Now Steve Perry is taking a look at the newly released D7500 and does a very extensive compression between them and the D7500.

You really have to watch this entire video if you are interested in buying any of these cameras (or even if you already got a D7500) as it mentions a very large number of points. In general though it seems that Nikon made the D7500 a sort of a between camera – it takes a lot from the D500 (with a few minor improvements and quite a few omissions), while building on the general external design of the D7200 (but again with some updates and some omissions – such as the lack of a second SD card and lack of UHS-II support and removal of the legacy lens support of the two other cameras).

We totally agree with Perry’s bottom line that the D7200 is still a better general purpose bang for the buck camera for most users while the D500 is still the top of the line for DX shooters so the D7500 takes a niche – being a more compact, less expensive version of the D500 with 80%-90% of the capabilities of its older sister aimed mostly at fast action, sports, wildlife and any other similar use case.

There are a lot of very strong and valid points in this video and we always appreciate Perry’s long professional experience as a wildlife and bird shooter. However there are quite a few things which he did not address in this video including video recording which we shall be looking at in our own upcoming D7500 review in a few weeks time.

Here are some of the main features of the D7500 (in case you forgot them from our original post when the camera was released):

20.9MP DX (APS-C) CMOS sensor (no AA filter) – similar to that of the D500.
Processor: Expeed 5 (used in the D500 as well, the D7200 used the older Expeed 4).
AF: 51 focus points with 15 cross types points (similar to the D7200; the D500 has a superior AF system with about 3 times the focusing points).
Viewfinder: 100% coverage with 0.94x magnification.
Shutter speed: 30-1/8000 seconds.
Video: 4K recording (but at 2.25x crop) and 1080p @60p.
Continuous Shooting – 8 fps (with extended buffer of up to 50 images in 14BIT RAW).
Battery: a new EN-EL15a battery (battery life is down to 950 images vs. 1100 images of the D7200).
Storage: a single SD/SDXC card with no UHS-II support (unlike the D500, the D7200 also has 2 SD slots).
Price: $1250 (body only).

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.