Greenguy33 Loc: Rhode Island

What are your opinions about the Nikon D500 for wildlife and bird photography?

Tigger1 Loc: Surrey, BC Canada

Is there something that your two existing cameras cannot do that makes you ask the question. If so, what problems are you encountering when you are doing "wildlife and bird photography"?

Greenguy33 Loc: Rhode Island

I'm simply curious what people think about the D500. It looks like a great camera for wildlife photography.

That's all. :thumbup:

Haydon

How can one say if it hasn't been releasaed yet?

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

It will be replacing my D7100 (which I have already sold) as soon as it shows up. Having gotten to use the D500 twice already has sold me on it 100%.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

What would make this better than a D7100 or D800 for anything? 20MP DX vs 24MP DX; or 20MP DX vs 36MP FF. Newer processor or firmware? Having not used any of these I can only wonder.

For wildlife auto-focusing is critical. Has Nikon made a recent improvement in that factor with the D500? Otherwise I'd think a Canon AF to be best choice for wildlife. Note, I'm a Pentax user but I do read up and talk to people about their cameras (mostly objectively and respectfully). I mainly do landscape, close-up, and macro photography and don't need AF except when I get lazy.

Bill_de Loc: US

It's an entirely new af with cross sensors almost to the edges. It shoots 10 FPS. 200 frame buffer. All the specs are out, on Nikonusa.com.

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DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

I'm curious about to see if it has the AF lens tuning. I'll find out tomorrow when it gets here!

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

The arrival may be informative for all of us. Something new from Nikon in the way of AF as I've been told.

SharpShooter Loc: NorCal

Green, it's pretty hard to have an option on a camer that nobody has used yet.
Wildlife???
I'll give you my opinion...., I don't expect anyone to agree but 20mp is just not enough to do the best wildlife work. Birds especially are hard to shoot if they are small and most photogenic will never own the lenses that will do the best job with small mp. .
How important is 10fps for wildlife? Occasionally it's the only thing that will work, but to make that an important criteria, a bird shot with GREAT feather detail is more critical than what the occasional 10 fps shot will yield.
The 500 like its Canon counterpart are better sports cameras than wildlife. For GOOD wildlife, you need more detail, especially if your gonna crop at all. Even with small crops the feather detail falls apart really fast. You just wind up with a brown blob.
The 500 will be good if you're gonna crawl on your belly till you can see the whites in their eyes, but if you're gonna pull up in your car and stand near it to shoot, I would use a FF with big mp's every time.
A serious wildlifer is gonna have to carry both a 500 and an 810!
Just my opinion. ;-)
SS

DaveO Loc: Northeast CT

Gee,too bad Nikon didn't check with you first. :lol: :lol:

Greenguy33 Loc: Rhode Island

Thank you SS! I always value your opinion.
:thumbup:

Tigger1 Loc: Surrey, BC Canada

Without a production unit in hand to put through some real life tests, we have to make our decision to buy or not to buy based on Nikon's promo releases.

What we know is there is a much improved focusing system with 153 focus points that are coupled to the latest Expeed 5 processor, 10 frames per second shutter and up to 200 images buffer with a 20.9 megapixel sensor. Compared to the best Canon action sports/wildlife camera the Nikon d500 is equal or better from a specs point of view. Still, until it proves itself I the field we will not truly know if it is the king of crop sensor cameras for the specific purposes to which it was designed. Is it a d800, certainly not but the a d800 can hardly be called a fast sports/wildlife action camera either. Each camera is a tool designed to do a specific set of tasks, neither camera does all photography tasks equally well. It is the responsibility to chose the appropriate camera for the task at hand. So, to answer your question, Nikon has assembled a camera the D500, with components that are equal or better than any other consumer level camera currently on offer but as I said before, based on Nikons promo specs and real world testing will either prove or disprove Nikon's promo information. By the end of May we will have the answer to your question IMO.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I don't know, but is does sure seem like very little will be lost if I were to get a D500 compared to my D800 with my 600mmF4. But I might have to get a better tripod, to hold a camera and lens that has an effective field of view of a 900mm lens.

The focusing system, low light/high ISO performance etc all look pretty amazing on paper. Got to get my hands on one ASAP to see for myself.

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

It has great potential but its too early to make judgements.