D7500 backward step ?:

DaveyJ

Excellent review, many thanks !!!

CaMeRaQuEsT

Funny thing I'm finding is that gray market D7200 bodies on eBay are $50 to $75 more expensive now than right before the D7500 was announced. This might be due to seasonal pricing, too, but still odd as I was fully expecting D7200 prices to actually go down.

On another note, DPreview's image quality comparison widget shows the D7500's RAW output at the higher ISO ranges actually being a 1/3 to 2/3 of an EV worse than the D7200's in noise amounts when adjusted to equally sized previews. Guess the Sony 20Mp sensor trades speed for a slight detriment in IQ compared to the Toshiba 24Mp sensor. OTOH, the D7500's output actually looks a bit sharper than the D7200's, which might be due to sharper micro lenses, something that Nikon has indeed mentioned as imbuing it with, along with better RGB filters that finally get rid of the green cast that has ever been present until EXPEED 5.

Pistnbroke

Now you know why I bought a grey 7100 and 810 to get away from this noise/iso shifting

DaveyJ

I'll have my D7500 Tuesday, in time for Nikon's 100th Anniversary! Then I will get to see how it compares to my D7200 which I now am using pretty much with my 200-500 Nikon lens, and the D500, Ill probably use that camera mostly with my 16-80 and the AF-P DX VR.

spraynpray

I think you will get best results with the 200-500 on the D500 and the 16-80 on the D7200/D7500.

Photobug

spraynpray said:

I think you will get best results with the 200-500 on the D500 and the 16-80 on the D7200/D7500.

Is that because of the better/faster AF system in the D500?

DaveyJ

The D7200 has had the 200-500 since it arrived! The D7500 will have the16-80 and the D70-300 because I need the most up to date video on that as well as stills. The200-500 is not that suited to video from what I see. I have no problem with its speed. But many times if the hike or float trip is to long or not conducive to a 9 pound rig, that will be locked up until a time when the tripod and long distance wildlife shots are the objective. Took it as a single carry on a five mile around a wilderness lake and I was impressed with the ability to make mission, but part of it was Luck, part of it was excellent weather, and part if it was going to a place I know well. I will carry a second D7200 or a D7100 as A second camera with another lens on that. All photo ops will be .......choose two cameras, and the long lens will play the bench for the most arduous high hazard hikes, and the AF-P DX VR will be a good choice instead of the heavier lens, and in fact will be the on the second camera most of the time. The 16-80 will be on one of my two cameras every hour I am out and about. The D500 will be in Key West Florida on a work vacation.

spraynpray

Photobug said:

spraynpray said:

I think you will get best results with the 200-500 on the D500 and the 16-80 on the D7200/D7500.

Is that because of the better/faster AF system in the D500?

Yes. The D500 and 200-500 are a great pair.

NSXTypeR

The Camera Store's review of the D7500.

DaveyJ

I feel the D7200 is a good enough camera for the 200-500. The D500 is going to be at our Florida location for awhile at work, and I see little NEED for it in Yellowstone. I awhile I will have exclusive use of the D500 and not have to share it at all. But as the 200-500 has little use for video and I need a camera for the 16-80 10-20, 70-300 AF-P DX VR lens I need tow other bodies.I figure the D7500 will fit in nicely however I am using several other systems too that are not Nikon like GoPro and DJI. The Nikon's though are my primary rigs. The other stuff we do depend on also but usually that work is done by my son Robin and Grandson Christjen but they are usually off on their own adventures and grandad is left to his own devices. Now I am going to see what the Camera Store guy said. Thanks for sharing that. Eventually I may get a D850 partly as 8K timelapse is becoming a requirement for our work. We have made very heavy use of timelapse in the past and know it is important. Both in Farm work, as is at least 4K video and all that. Followed the NR stuff for the 100th Anniversary. A cliff hanger!

DaveyJ

The D7500 review of the Camera Store was pretty bad. I have seen a lot of their reviews. Some were absolute bs. This one is a sad example of their jaded view and I think it leads potential buyers to veer off in some other direction.Way to much was made of the 18-300 lens which I have used and find a great dies it all lens but I prefer two lens as I feel it does nothing well enough. He also pushes wedding and event use and then withdraws that use totally so it is apparent this review if fatally flawed from the get go. Should have been story boarded or use a decision making matrix like the USArmy would as the entire message is wrong, and shows not one scrap of reasoning. This camera is for a novice or a knowledgeable enthusiast
Who knows what he or she wants. Steve Perry's review is vastly superior!

Having watched The Camera Stores testing of cell phones and various cameras this one falls into their typical pattern of review having both some good and bad points. When I saw the just mentioned Camera Store review I showed it to pros around the USA. They were not impressed with taking a static river scene and exptrapolating as much as they did in that other review. This one NEEDED to pick a potential buyer better, use several lens or something, and when you compare it to the heavy real world and real camera wildlife application like Steve Perry did.....this review is simply put in my opinion.....a hatchet job, a knee jerk reaction review, and makes the Camera Store look like those who do a shallow review just to get hits. Well, here is my hit. I doubt that this would last against a real month long field use, or in an octagon ring against a tired old man like me. It serves very well if the object is to beat down the D7500.

As I own the D500 which I regard as one of the most important cameras on Planet Earth, and I have the D7200, the D7500 I can and must draw my own conclusions. For sure it is a video the Nikon Product Development Engineers should have anticipated when the D7500 was designed and went the D3300 to D3400 Route. If the D7500 I have got gets that judgement from me I will send it back. I doubt that will happen. Their are advancements on the camera. One is heavy use of carbon fiber. We use this everyday in our farm work for equipment. For those who carry and use powerful and potentially dangerous farm tools, such features can save your life....
I think the D7500 is selling quite well? I think it has a place in my tool kit. Time will tell. Sorry to beat up on the Camera Store, but I think THEY ought to go view Steve Perry's review, and maybe even should have gone the ThomHogan route? Wait on a review rather than just bang it out. However this review makes the Ken Rockwell review look bad in at least they used a real camera in the real world! And if I form a really bad opinion from my in the field use I will have to send a correction. I do note.......the film was done on a GH-5. Not a D7500, that alone seals the video utility of this camera.

BVS

Since I've been unable to find a functional copy in my local Best Buys, I decided to rent a D7500 for the weekend to give it a try. These were my thoughts coming from a D7100:

• Overall, the camera is quite nice. As others have already noted, it's lighter and thinner than the D7100 and has a deeper grip, which makes it more nimble and easy to hold, unlike the D7100 which is more of a brick. It balances better with lighter lenses like the 70-300 AF-P. The lack of metal does make it feel slightly cheaper vs. the D7100, but it's a purely tactile thing and is otherwise solid. Also, the front left side of the camera near the AF button is flatter which makes is sit better in your hands when reviewing photos.
  
  
• The 8fps and large buffer is brilliant. Shooting with it is a much more confident experience. Even shooting RAW+JPG and using an 80MB/s card I never buffered out. It was really nice to be able to just fire away when needed for an action shot, vs. the D7100 which can only manage about 5 shots.
  
  
• The tilt screen was my second favorite new feature. As Steve Perry noted in his review, it's really useful for getting shots low to the ground, but I also found it handy for shooting video at hip level.
  
  
• The screen is actually slightly better than the one on my D7100. The resolution is the same but it's a bit brighter and sharper. The touchscreen works well, although I didn't use it all that much. Personally, I felt like mashing the buttons was less effort than swiping through photos, or maybe I'm just too used to doing it that way on the D7100. Touch to focus and touch to focus and shoot was pretty cool though.
  
  
• I had high hopes for the viewfinder face detection, but the results were mixed. It seems to work the best, and find eyes most reliably, when the faces are not too big and not too small in the frame, like with a half body shot. You'd think that a frame-filling head and shoulders shot would be the easiest for it to find the eyes in, but for some reason it was all over the place in that sort of situation. The remember AF point by orientation feature sort of made up this though, which isn't available on D7100.
  
  
• I've seen some people complain about the position of the Fn1 button. Personally, it only felt badly placed the first time I held the camera when getting a feel for the new grip. After that, and when actually shooting, it was never an issue. I could see if you have extra long fingers you might hit it though.
  
  
• I haven't seen this noted before, but it appears they removed Easy ISO for some reason. I couldn't find any reference to it in the menu system or the manual. There is the new ISO button which standardizes the process of changing ISO regardless of mode, but as someone who always uses Easy ISO on my D7100 it took a while to change my habit. Maybe they thought Easy ISO was no longer needed with the new button, but it's strange that they left Easy Exposure Compensation even though there's an exposure compensation button right next to the ISO one.
  
  
• The top panel LCD has all the primary information, but some secondary info is relegated to the back screen only, which leads to a disjointed experience in some cases. For example, flash compensation is shown on both the top and back, but flash mode is only on the back (iirc). As someone who typically used the top panel for everything, sometimes I'd start looking at the top, then realize the info wasn't there, and then need to look at the back.
  
  
• Some settings like exposure compensation can't be changed while reviewing photos which was sometimes annoying. On the D7100 I'm used to viewing a histogram, adjust exposure compensation, start shooting again, but on D7500 I had to remember to to turn off the screen first (by tapping the shutter button or something) and then adjust. It's possible there's a setting to change this behavior, but I didn't have the time to investigate it further.
  
  
• Another minor nit was that after you delete a photo it shows the next photo on the card, instead of the previous one. When I review photos I just shot it always made sense to start at the end and work backwards, since previous photos are typically from the same burst or series, whereas the next photo is back to the first photo on the card. With the D7500 though, every time I delete a photo I'm either taken to the first photo on the card and have to hit back (if I deleted the last photo), or I'm taken to a photo I already reviewed and have to hit back (if I deleted a photo in the middle of a sequence). Again, there may be a setting to change this, but it was kind of annoying.
  

I still need to upgrade my software to support D7500 and review the photos, so we'll see how that part turns out.

spraynpray

Thanks BVS.

heartyfisher

Good report BVS, thanks.

DaveyJ

I have my new D7500. It is very good. My friend looking at the same reviews bought the D7200. But he is upgrading from the D3200 with which he has done the most amazing work I have ever seen with a 3200. He has a fleet of lens. I needed another body for my upcoming trip.The tilt screen is more useful than I thought it would be.Still not impressed with how to achieve proper focus for videos! I will have to enlist my grandson's expertise as what I have seen on the internet thus far is useless to me! The D7500 is a big step forward for some functions compared to the D7100 which recently I use at the farm as the 200-500 is on the D7200 and I intend to leave it on that as it does what I need for that.

DaveyJ

Well more of an update on the D7500, the touch focusing and group focus grids labeled grp
Is really wonderful. Anybody who thinks the D7500 is a step backward are wrong! The D7200 still is an incredibly a great camera! Video and.focus speed is improved in the D7200. Size and feel of the camera is ideal, few changes here from the D7200. LCDs on both cameras very close, until you pull out the flip screen. I wondered how bright and useful the tilt screen would be in outdoor conditions, really incredibly useful from my point of view, but then add the touch and central group focus? The group focus labeled grp is very, very fast. I was able to take multiple stills of a helicopter that flies over my place heading to a high end estate that was better than I have done before! This camera which The Camera Store concluded is without a large segment of buyers.....I would not hesitate to use it for wildlife, birds in flight, sports events, weddings, or any genre of photography with the scenic speciality being the one I would wonder about but my guess is with the 16-80 DX
It will actually be my scenery camera on my upcoming Yellowstone NP trip.

DaveyJ

Now ready to buy a new Nikon battery for a spare, the new lithium 15a fits all the cameras I carry, I guess I will,buy a $60 Nikon 15a rather than saving I think ten dollars

Photobug

DaveyJ said:

Now ready to buy a new Nikon battery for a spare, the new lithium 15a fits all the cameras I carry, I guess I will,buy a $60 Nikon 15a rather than saving I think ten dollars

Good move. Will be interesting if you see any difference in number of shots out of a full charge. It will probably take 2 or 3 run downs to get the max life out of the battery.

DaveyJ

In terms of battery life assessment, I will not be able to give more than a rough estimate of that compared to some. I do know the various grey and black 15 and 15a batteries work in my D7100, D7200, D7500, and D500. The D500 has the shortest battery life in Camera of these Nikon DX DSLR. D7500 seems pretty good in that department. I have been VERY impressed with the D7500 in terms of field use and images. This camera for sure is NO step backward! Recently my son had a situation where a D7100 with onboard flashwould have outperformed the D500 using an external light source, not. Speedflash, since it has no onboard flash. The 15a supposedly has a better battery power usage designed to give longer battery life. One detail I always remember about batteries......in police work we found that batteries we used in radios worked best when used until the battery was low rather than taking out batteries that had not been pulled down very far and putting them back in battery chargers. As it was a very expensive radio system this situation was tracked far more than a normal user ever would. I guess applies to our Nikon DSLR batteries? I will take three chargers on my upcoming trip two for 7000 series cameras, one for my D3200 which once again gets to go on this vacation as a backup. I just think the 15a Lithium battery at $60 is worth the price. It is also very good that it fits and works in so many Nikon DSLRs. The cost savings of a 15 Lithium battery is only $10.

DaveyJ

I have had the D7500 for well over a couple of months now. I rate the D7500 as the best camera deal I ever made. Mostly I use the camera with my 200-500 Nikkor which is also amazing. The D7200 I use with the 16-80 or the 10-20, the AF-P DX VR Nikkor or the 60 Micro Nikkor. The D500 is now exclusively in a underwater housing. That rig has a 200 ft. System and has not been tested enough to know if it was the right way to go.

Photobug

DaveyJ...agree with your comments on the batteries. I never charge my Nikon batteries until they go under 35/40%. They really do best when they have been run low rather than charging frequently when barely run down.

When I first got my D750 the battery life was not good and as the battery got broken in the battery life improved substantially. Same thing with the D7100 but not near as evident as the D750. Lithium batteries need to be charged only when less than 35%.

DaveyJ

Sure a great reason to carry spare batteries! I only have one lithium siare battery for my D7500 and D7200 and I will have my trusty D3200 at Yellowstone to use with the 18-55 and Sigma 10-20. Two batteries for the D3200, but unfortunately I can't use the 70-300 I am taking along which is the lighter AF-P DX VR which will have to be used with the D7200. I hate to take the 16-80 off the D7200 as that is my primary lens for that camera.

DaveyJ

Have to admit, each time I pick up another Nikon DSLR now I resent it does not have the features the D7500 has, a step backward? No, running forward at a nice pace......reminds me when I was a track star....


But that is ancient history!!!

PB_PM

So DaveyJ, how many camera bodies do you have now? 200?

NSXTypeR

I'm happy to hear there's such a large contingent of this forum that shoot with DX shooters and can give solid opinions on DX bodies.

If my D7000 were to die tomorrow, I'd be happy picking up a D7500.

Honestly, from what I remember, battery life seemed to have degrade fairly steeply on my D7000. When brand new, I remember being able to go almost 2000 shots before charging. I now do about 1000 shots per charge. I'm not sure if it's a "true" degradation or because I was using it more heavily when I depended on it. I tend to use my DSLR on spurts, I only use it when I go on vacation or know I need good shots.

Either way, it's still better than depending on my phone for photos, so I'm still pretty happy.