Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

You must admit Nikon has finally gotten electronic diaphragms after Canon having them for 28 years. Of course you will need another score sheet to see what camera works with what lens again.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

I have a friend that is a former Nikon guy too. He loves his Nikon and actually still has some. But for his wildlife photography which he loves more than any of his other photography, he couldn't wait any longer for Nikon to replace the aging D300 with the D400 everybody had been waiting for. Nikon really missed the boat when they didn't even keep up with the aging Canon 7D and bring out (leapfrog) the D400. Now, years later they finally bring out a D500 that looks awesome. There's only one thing they could have done better on the D500 and that's to give it a full articulating screen instead of a half assed screen.

Anyway, I'm sure that the D500 is awesome and as expected, they will surpass the Canon 7D II's performance. That's the way things work in a competitive business. They waited to see what Canon has, then put something out that is better. Too bad Nikon didn't do it sooner with a D400. There would have been fewer people jumping ship.

To sum it up, Nikon missed the boat when they didn't come out with the D400 to compete with Canons 7D. They have about the worse customer service I've read about and heard about first hand by friends. The new camera (D500) is way too high in price - in my opinion. And one last thing I might throw out there is, I wouldn't want to be the first person to jump on the new D500 because of Nikons track record releasing new bodies with major flaws, trying to deny it, and then never really offering any kind of apology. Everybody, and I mean everybody including the people that own other cameras like Canon and Sony, have heard about the D600 and D800 problems. I must say, I wasn't happy with Canon when they kept pushing the release date on some of their new products out farther and farther. Especially their newest 500mm and 600mm prime lenses that were both about 6 months late. But at least they ironed out the issues before releasing a faulty product.

georgevedwards Loc: Essex, Maryland.

Yes, a main issue would be the low light capabilities. I would love to see some samples from both to see when the noise starts to creep in. Yes, I too rarely shoot beyond 6400 because of too much noise. BUT low light subjects are among my favorites, sunsets, those magical twilight hours, night photography, are driving me nuts, when I switched from film I thought "Now I can finally take low light pictures with perfection, since it is electronic instead of chemical" What a rude awakening I had. No difference at all much. I remember buying some 800 film to take pictures indoors at the museum without a flash and they were noisy as hell. If the new Nikon has made significant progress in this area, that would even surpass a full frame camera for instance, it would be well worth the price and 'jumping ship'. "High ISO does not a noiseless picture make, (necessarily)"

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

I think it's great that Nikon is introducing the D500.... Assuming it lives up to expectations, it will motivate Canon to really kick ass with their 7D "Mark III", and maybe sooner rather than later.

But for now all we have is comparisons of the current 7D Mark II and D500 on paper and the few differences are only marginally revealing and may or may not be particularly notable.

The D500's MSRP is $500 more than the current street price of the 7DII.

7DII has a built-in flash (capable of off-camera flash control), D500 doesn't.

D500 has an articulated LCD monitor and touch-screen controls, 7DII doesn't.

You can argue both for and against a built-in flash, articulated LCD and touch controls. These features can be nice and useful to some, but may be of little use to other people, might reduce the quality of weather and dust resistance sealing and/or effect durability to some extent.

Note the slightly larger and significantly higher resolution LCD screen on the D500... 3.2" & 2.3 million pixel vs 3" & 1 million pixel on the 7DII.

D500 has built-in WiFi/Bluetooth, 7DII doesn't. Canon takes a different approach by offering a separate Wireless File Transfer module (WFT-E7/E7A 2) with much greater operating range and faster data transfer than built-in WiFi can offer. Off course, this means spending significantly more (about $770), but might arguably be a more professional approach. Haven't yet seen any claims from Nikon regarding the D500's built-in WiFi's range... but typical in most cameras is about 40 feet or less. The Canon WFT module is able to connect roughly 10X farther away... claims upward of 400 feet. However, to be completely fair, Nikon offers a separate and more powerful WT-7A module for the D500, costing about $750 and claims it has upwards of a 600 foot operating range.

7D-series cameras inherited some design features from Canon's top of the line 1D-series.... Notably, the AF system has a discrete chip running it, while image processing is handled through dual processors. This is one of the reasons for the very high performance of the sophisticated AF systems in the 7D models (19-point in the original, 65-point in the Mk II). The 7D models also use a shutter release mechanism similar to the 1D-series, that has an exceptionally short shutter lag for very responsive shooting. We don't yet know how the D500 compares in these respects.

The CMOS sensors that Sony supplies to Nikon have pretty consistently had a bit wider dynamic range than the CMOS that Canon makes themselves (and has done for 15 years now).... at their native ISO 100. But typically when stepped up to higher ISOs the difference is gradually reduced until they are virtually the same around ISO 1600, and the Canon sensors actually tend to have a slightly wider DR at any ISOs above that. Again, there is no way to know for certain how they compare, until the D500 hits the street and can be tested.

The 7DII tops out at ISO 16000 expandable to 52100. The D500 offers up to ISO 52100 expandable to an amazing 1640000. Of course, it's questionable what's actually usable in either camera. That will vary depending upon the end purpose planned for the images being taken, post-processing and the user's expectations. For example, if planning to convert an image to black and white, it might be possible to use a much higher ISO than one would want to with a color image. It is nice to have the potential to use an ultra high ISO, if it will serve some limited purposes adequately or if future improvements in post-processing software makes it more practical to use more widely.

I don't expect the D500 will rival the high ISO capabilities of full frame cameras, any more than the 7DII does. The much larger pixel sites on most FF sensor cameras will always be superior for detail capture and lower image noise. (Note that the 50MP 5DS/5DS-R full frame models have almost exactly the same size pixel sites and density as the 20MP APS-C 7DII, but are NOT high ISO cameras by any means... However, both those FF models are capable of capturing considerably more fine image detail than 7DII... though you may not be able to see the difference unless you examine the images at ridiculously high magnifications on your computer monitor or make really big prints from each format.)

180,000 pixel metering system in the D500 versus 150,000 pixel system in the 7DII.... Best guess, there likely will be no user-detectable differences.

153-point AF system (99 cross type) in the D500 versus 65-point AF system (all cross type) in the 7DII... Well, first of all, how many AF points do we actually need? This smacks of one-up-manship that may or may not make for any real world advantage one way or the other. We'll have to wait and see how the new AF system works in the D500.

The D500 claims to have a -4EV capable AF system, compared to -3EV in the 7DII. That's approximately the difference between being able to focus in 3/4 moonlight and in 3/4 moonlight with light clouds. If true, either is a significant improvement over -1EV or -0.5EV capable systems many other cameras offer. Both cameras are "f8 capable", which is great. That makes possible some lens + teleconverter options that won't work on "lesser" cameras.

200 RAW buffer in the D500 versus 31 RAW buffer in the 7DII? Well, that's pretty impressive on paper, if it's accurate. But, frankly I try not to use burst mode more often than necessary. A single well-timed shot can often give better results than "machine gunning", which also tends to make for many more images to post-process at the end of the day... a lot more time sitting at the computer!

Besides, I'm not entirely certain the D500 actually can buffer 200 RAW... In the Nikon preliminary info docs it says "Continuous capture of up to 200 JPEG (Fine/Large), at a frame rate of 10 fps even in 14 bit lossless/compressed RAW files...". This might be read that it can shoot at 10 fps regardless of file format.... But that only JPEGs can buffer up to 200. Many of the announcements we're seeing are based upon this document that might be mis-read. Some other announcements are reporting 200 JPEG/79 RAW buffer (http://petapixel.com/2016/01/05/nikon-unveils-the-d500-a-crop-sensor-dslr-with-pro-level-specs-and-features/. Even if that's the case, it's quite impressive. In comparison, no slouch either, the 7DII can buffer up to 130 JPEG, 31 RAW, both at 10 fps (slowing very slightly to 9.5 fps for focusing in some cases).

Now, I do use short bursts at times when shooting action that's difficult to time... But mine are usually 3 or 4 frame bursts, occasionally 5 or 6. Almost never any more than that. I already spend more time than I like at my computer editing thousands of images! Sure, I bet someone might occasionally find 200 (or 79) consecutive shots at the 10 fps burst rate handy for something. But by the time I wanted to be shooting like that, I'd probably just switch to video mode instead!

There also is a big difference in shots-per-battery-charge claims: At first glance the D500 offers nearly double (roughly 1200 shots) compared to 7DII(about 650 shots). HOWEVER, a lot of that difference has to do with the 7DII having a built-in flash, which is used for 50% of shots done in the standard CIPA battery test procedure. If the 7DII's built-in flash isn't used, it will get a lot more shots per charge and perform much more similar to the D500. I regularly get 1100-1200+ shots per battery/per charge with my 7D using older, lower capacity batteries. 7DII is said to be a little harder on batteries, hence the new higher capacity LP-E6"N" that Canon introduced along with the model One also probably can conserve even more battery power by turning off the 7DII's built-in GPS, a feature that D500 doesn't have.

The D500 is about 100 grams (20 paper clips) lighter than the 7DII... not sure why this is. However, 7DII has a magnesium body shell, which Canon claims is the reason they don't offer built-in WiFi due to the metal body hindering the WiFi signal. This is purely a guess, but perhaps part of the reason it's a little lighter is because the D500 uses some plastic panels to accommodate it's built-in WiFi and Bluetooth (as the Canon 70D does). I do know that the D500's top body panel is claimed to be metal (one-piece, in fact, made possible since there's no built-in flash... the lack of which also might save a little weight).

Both cameras have dual memory card slots: 7DII has one for SD and one for Compactflash. D500 instead accommodates SD and XQD memory (haven't been able to determine if both slots can accommodate both types of memory... or if it's one slot for each type).

I shoot stills with my DSLRs. I am not a videographer... so it doesn't mean much to me personally... But I know the D500 is said to be 4K capable, while the 7DII isn't.

Both manufacturers offer deep, extensive systems, though each also offers some unique specialty items that might make one lean toward one or the other. On the whole, Nikkors tend to cost a little more than comparable Canon lenses, and Canon has put more into using fluorite in their telephotos (pioneered development of synthetic fluorite). But both have superb selection of high quality glass, as well as good selection of more affordable options for folks who don't need or want the premium stuff. Some like the Nikon flash system better... Though personally I find the Canon flashes easy to use and quite good too. Nikon FX cameras can be used with DX lenses, with some limitations... OTOH, Canon designs their EF-S lenses so that they won't even physically mount on their full frame cameras.

Canon repair service and support is some of the best in the business... While the same can't be said for Nikon. But today's stuff is so reliable and upgrades so frequent that service may never be needed.

Yes, Nikon has had some stumbles with new product roll-outs. But, to be fair, so has Canon (T6i/T6s sensor spots and 1DIII AF system issues are a couple that come to mind).

In the end, there are more similarities than differences between the 7DII and D500... And in the real world both should work quite well. Anyone deeply invested in lenses and accessories of one brand or the other would take a major hit in the wallet switching systems, so it's great that both manufacturers are now offering top-of-the-line, pro-oriented APS-C models (and one-upping each other). These didn't exist at all few years ago, before Nikon introduced the D200, and especially the D300 models... to which Canon responded with the original 7D, and now the 7DII.

CHOLLY Loc: THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE!

Sony A77II :mrgreen:

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

You are kidding right. It is a false hope kind of post. Here are the only 11 things you need to know about the new NIKON D500. Check out the AUTO fine tune, I mean really, this blows Canon right out of the water, as if they were ever afloat.

1 Things You Need to Know About the New Nikon D500

JANUARY 6, 2016 BY NASIM MANSUROV76 COMMENTS

The new Nikon D500 surely looks amazing and very promising – much more exciting than the new Nikon D5 in my opinion, which is surely impressive, especially for those who need such a high-end tool. While we have written about the standard specifications of the D500 and its amazing features, like its 153 point AF system and its practically unlimited buffer, there are a few other hidden features that come in the Nikon D500, which are certainly worth looking into. Let’s take a look at these in more detail.


Nikon D500
1) Focus Point Coverage

The new 153 focus point Advanced Multi-CAM 20K system really looks amazing, but did you know how it looks within the viewfinder? Nikon really wanted to make sure that the D500’s viewfinder gets as much coverage as possible, since the focus points are scattered all over, reaching the extreme left and right sides of the viewfinder, as seen below:

Nikon D500 Viewfinder Coverage
For the most part, you can forget about the focus and recompose technique with the D500 – there will be rarely a need for that, since you can reach so deep on all sides of the viewfinder and with 99 focus points being cross-type, there will be a small chance for focus errors! The Nikon D500 gets -4 EV sensitivity in the center focus point and the rest of the 152 focus points are rated at -3 EV, which is amazing. And if you shoot in the 1.3x crop mode, the amount of empty space on the top and the bottom of the frame gets reduced even more!

2) Auto AF Fine Tune

If it really works, this one is huge! In fact, I cannot believe that Nikon omitted this feature from its announcement, because it could potentially be a game-changer. It turns out that both Nikon D500 and D5 have a brand new “Auto AF Fine Tune” feature, which after achieving focus in live view, automatically adjusts AF Fine Tune settings for the attached lens. And you can apparently do this with only a few button operations! This looks extremely promising, because fine tuning lenses has historically been a painful experience, requiring specific tools and lots of wasted time. I can only imagine how cool it would be to instantly calibrate lenses on the fly when I work with a subject, for that particular focusing distance!

3) Superior Face Tracking and Scene Recognition

Both Nikon D500 and D5 comes with a brand new 180K-pixel RGB metering sensor, which in conjunction with the AF system and the EXPEED 5 image processor can deliver much better AF performance, especially when it comes to tracking people’s faces and recognizing different scenes for more accurate metering. Subject and face tracking performance are enhanced not only for phase detection AF system, but also for tracking subjects using Live View (contrast-detect AF). Auto-area AF mode in particular, should behave much better when compared to any previous Nikon DSLR.

4) Articulating LCD Touchscreen

Another great addition is the 3.2″ articulating LCD screen, which can be really useful for shooting both stills and video at different angles. Being the top-of-the-line DSLR, the Nikon D5 does not get an articulating LCD screen, while the D500 does! In addition, the LCD screen on both cameras is touch-enabled and the D500 specifically allows for additional touch control, such as engaging the shutter during live view operation. Just like on the D5500, you can move between captured images by swiping the screen and you can use the pinch-to-zoom feature as well, which is neat!

5) 200 RAW Image Buffer

The Nikon D500, just like its bigger brother, the Nikon D5, is capable of shooting up to 200 losslessly compressed 14-bit RAW images before the buffer fills up when using XQD memory cards. That’s right, Nikon finally gave both cameras a pretty much unlimited buffer! Only if you choose to shoot in 14-bit uncompressed RAW (which is plain silly), the buffer would be reduced to 71 images. That’s a crazy tool for those machine gun “spray and pray” moments we all experience every once in a while :)

6) Electronic VR for Shooting HD Video

While the Nikon D500 does not have in-body image stabilization (IBIS), Nikon developed something called “Electronic Vibration Reduction”, which basically stabilizes video shooting via software. And the cool thing is, you can actually use this feature in combination with lens VR to get even better results! Nikon made this electronic VR work in 3 directions – horizontal, vertical and rotational.

7) Flicker Reduction for Stills and Video

When shooting subjects with fluorescent or mercury-vapor light sources, the Nikon D500 will automatically detect such scenes and automatically adjust its shooting pattern in order to yield bright, evenly lit images every time. Interestingly, although the Nikon D5 is a much more expensive and higher-end camera, it has no support for flicker reduction when shooting stills, so this particular feature is exclusive to the D500 in this case.

8) Active D-Lighting for Shooting HD Video

You can now apply Active D-Lighting when shooting video, which should result in much better resulting video quality, since details are preserved better in both highlights and shadows.

9) Button Illumination

Now this is a really cool feature that was previous reserved only for the top-of-the-line Nikon DSLRs like the D5 – the Nikon D500 is the first DX camera to feature button illumination! Not only are the button and control layouts consistent with the D5, which is neat for those who are planning to own both, but those buttons will illuminate in dark conditions showing what they do. Very cool indeed for shooting in low-light and in the night!

10) MB-D17 Battery Grip

If you want to make the D500 look like the D5 and double its battery life, you can do so with the brand new MB-D17 battery grip. Just like before, you can utilize the same EN-EL18a battery used by the D5 with an adapter and increase the number of shots per charge from 1,240 to a whopping 2,510 shots.

Nikon MB-D17
11) ISO, Function Buttons and Joystick

The Nikon D500, just like the Nikon D5, went through some very important ergonomic changes. The ISO button has finally been relocated to the right side of the camera grip, which allows changing ISO with a single hand. Finally, no need to reprogram that video recording button to do this! In addition to the moved ISO button, the camera gained a new Function 2 button on the left side of the LCD screen, which allows one to program this button to perform one of the many functions of the camera. This is great, because you will be able to quickly change important camera settings without digging through the camera menu. On top of that, there is now a dedicated joystick on the back of the camera, just like the joystick found on the D4 / D4S / D5 cameras! Here is the layout of the rear of the Nikon D500:

Nikon D500 Rear
To find out more about the Nikon D500 camera and its hidden features, I would highly recommend to check out this PDF document from Nikon.com.

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

Sorry, I own the Sony A77II and the new Nikon D500 has so many more features. Here are just a few.

11 Things You Need to Know About the New Nikon D500

JANUARY 6, 2016 BY NASIM MANSUROV76 COMMENTS

The new Nikon D500 surely looks amazing and very promising – much more exciting than the new Nikon D5 in my opinion, which is surely impressive, especially for those who need such a high-end tool. While we have written about the standard specifications of the D500 and its amazing features, like its 153 point AF system and its practically unlimited buffer, there are a few other hidden features that come in the Nikon D500, which are certainly worth looking into. Let’s take a look at these in more detail.


Nikon D500
1) Focus Point Coverage

The new 153 focus point Advanced Multi-CAM 20K system really looks amazing, but did you know how it looks within the viewfinder? Nikon really wanted to make sure that the D500’s viewfinder gets as much coverage as possible, since the focus points are scattered all over, reaching the extreme left and right sides of the viewfinder, as seen below:

Nikon D500 Viewfinder Coverage
For the most part, you can forget about the focus and recompose technique with the D500 – there will be rarely a need for that, since you can reach so deep on all sides of the viewfinder and with 99 focus points being cross-type, there will be a small chance for focus errors! The Nikon D500 gets -4 EV sensitivity in the center focus point and the rest of the 152 focus points are rated at -3 EV, which is amazing. And if you shoot in the 1.3x crop mode, the amount of empty space on the top and the bottom of the frame gets reduced even more!

2) Auto AF Fine Tune

If it really works, this one is huge! In fact, I cannot believe that Nikon omitted this feature from its announcement, because it could potentially be a game-changer. It turns out that both Nikon D500 and D5 have a brand new “Auto AF Fine Tune” feature, which after achieving focus in live view, automatically adjusts AF Fine Tune settings for the attached lens. And you can apparently do this with only a few button operations! This looks extremely promising, because fine tuning lenses has historically been a painful experience, requiring specific tools and lots of wasted time. I can only imagine how cool it would be to instantly calibrate lenses on the fly when I work with a subject, for that particular focusing distance!

3) Superior Face Tracking and Scene Recognition

Both Nikon D500 and D5 comes with a brand new 180K-pixel RGB metering sensor, which in conjunction with the AF system and the EXPEED 5 image processor can deliver much better AF performance, especially when it comes to tracking people’s faces and recognizing different scenes for more accurate metering. Subject and face tracking performance are enhanced not only for phase detection AF system, but also for tracking subjects using Live View (contrast-detect AF). Auto-area AF mode in particular, should behave much better when compared to any previous Nikon DSLR.

4) Articulating LCD Touchscreen

Another great addition is the 3.2″ articulating LCD screen, which can be really useful for shooting both stills and video at different angles. Being the top-of-the-line DSLR, the Nikon D5 does not get an articulating LCD screen, while the D500 does! In addition, the LCD screen on both cameras is touch-enabled and the D500 specifically allows for additional touch control, such as engaging the shutter during live view operation. Just like on the D5500, you can move between captured images by swiping the screen and you can use the pinch-to-zoom feature as well, which is neat!

5) 200 RAW Image Buffer

The Nikon D500, just like its bigger brother, the Nikon D5, is capable of shooting up to 200 losslessly compressed 14-bit RAW images before the buffer fills up when using XQD memory cards. That’s right, Nikon finally gave both cameras a pretty much unlimited buffer! Only if you choose to shoot in 14-bit uncompressed RAW (which is plain silly), the buffer would be reduced to 71 images. That’s a crazy tool for those machine gun “spray and pray” moments we all experience every once in a while :)

6) Electronic VR for Shooting HD Video

While the Nikon D500 does not have in-body image stabilization (IBIS), Nikon developed something called “Electronic Vibration Reduction”, which basically stabilizes video shooting via software. And the cool thing is, you can actually use this feature in combination with lens VR to get even better results! Nikon made this electronic VR work in 3 directions – horizontal, vertical and rotational.

7) Flicker Reduction for Stills and Video

When shooting subjects with fluorescent or mercury-vapor light sources, the Nikon D500 will automatically detect such scenes and automatically adjust its shooting pattern in order to yield bright, evenly lit images every time. Interestingly, although the Nikon D5 is a much more expensive and higher-end camera, it has no support for flicker reduction when shooting stills, so this particular feature is exclusive to the D500 in this case.

8) Active D-Lighting for Shooting HD Video

You can now apply Active D-Lighting when shooting video, which should result in much better resulting video quality, since details are preserved better in both highlights and shadows.

9) Button Illumination

Now this is a really cool feature that was previous reserved only for the top-of-the-line Nikon DSLRs like the D5 – the Nikon D500 is the first DX camera to feature button illumination! Not only are the button and control layouts consistent with the D5, which is neat for those who are planning to own both, but those buttons will illuminate in dark conditions showing what they do. Very cool indeed for shooting in low-light and in the night!

10) MB-D17 Battery Grip

If you want to make the D500 look like the D5 and double its battery life, you can do so with the brand new MB-D17 battery grip. Just like before, you can utilize the same EN-EL18a battery used by the D5 with an adapter and increase the number of shots per charge from 1,240 to a whopping 2,510 shots.

Nikon MB-D17
11) ISO, Function Buttons and Joystick

The Nikon D500, just like the Nikon D5, went through some very important ergonomic changes. The ISO button has finally been relocated to the right side of the camera grip, which allows changing ISO with a single hand. Finally, no need to reprogram that video recording button to do this! In addition to the moved ISO button, the camera gained a new Function 2 button on the left side of the LCD screen, which allows one to program this button to perform one of the many functions of the camera. This is great, because you will be able to quickly change important camera settings without digging through the camera menu. On top of that, there is now a dedicated joystick on the back of the camera, just like the joystick found on the D4 / D4S / D5 cameras! Here is the layout of the rear of the Nikon D500:

Nikon D500 Rear
To find out more about the Nikon D500 camera and its hidden features, I would highly recommend to check out this PDF document from Nikon.com.

Mark7829 Loc: Calfornia

What a waste of space. Please just provide links..

CHOLLY Loc: THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE!

bill, the D500 EXPANDS on the advances in this class of camera introduced by the A77II. :thumbup:

Features like electronic vibration reduction and active D-Lighting are actually imitations of prior Sony technological advances like Dynamic Range Optimizer and Super Steady Shot for video... and I'm willing to bet this new technology works along VERY similar lines. ;)

Same thing for Face Registration and Scene Recognition, something Sony has been doing for years in it's cameras.

Not saying that it is a BAD thing that Nikon has copied and probably improved these technologies. I'm just pointing out that Canon doesn't have this stuff. :lol:

Besides; the A77II is less than HALF the cost of the 7DII and almost 3 times the camera... placing it SQUARELY between the D500 and the 7DII in the APS-C sports shooter hierarchy.

A much BETTER comparison would be between the D500 and the A77II... but there is NO doubt that this new Nikon will be King of the Hill for now. ;)

Mark7829 Loc: Calfornia

Who cares - King of what Hill?? Only an idiot would try to make the claim that the Nikon is actually a Sony - stupidity!!!! Keep it up Cholly and his Sony Follies - lolololollllo

Billynikon Loc: Atlanta

All very nice but the deciding factor for many is what your lenses are. With a bunch of Nikon lenses, the D500 wins for me.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

Lets be realistic and cut this whining like a stuck pig that is coming from all these Canon Fanboi folks.

The Canon 7D Mark II did what you say... only when compared to the Nikon D7000 (introduced 4 years earlier, and already replaced with the D7100 a long before the 7D2, and then again shortly after the 7D2 by the D7200.

First, the "bit wider dynamic range" of the Sony sensors in these Nikon cameras is a huge bit. As for Canon equaling or surpassing the Nikons at ISO 1600, here is data from Bill Claff's fabulous web site,

http://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm#Canon%20EOS%207D%20Mark%20II,Nikon%20D7200

The "Low Light ISO" is the ISO value that produces 6.5 f/stops of photographic dynamic range. That is the value at which precisely nailing exposure can produce an essentially noiseless image when printed.

Note that the Nikon beats the Canon by 2 f/stops at ISO 100, that the Canon is not equal at ISO 1600 and is never actually better at any point up to ISO 12800. The advantage of the Nikon does become very very small at ISO values above 4000.

Unless the Nikon D500 steps bacwards in time and technology by 5 years, it will no doubt have a better sensor than the Canon 7D Mark II. What else is new though, the D7100 released three years ago did too!

In reality, is there any significance to the fact that the bottom level entry model from Nikon, the D3300, has a sensor that equals the sensor on the Canon 7D Mark II????

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

I am a Nikon guy, but, Nikon and MANY OTHER CAMERA manufactures use Sony chips in their products. ie, the D7000 series uses Sony chips. So, one could say, Nikon uses Sony chips so Sony is part of the Nikon line. Hey, it happens all over, Jeep for instance, use a Diesel engine built in Italy, has the engine shipped to USA, Jeep puts the Italian diesel engine in the Jeep in the USA, (the engine does not meet USA standards), and is shipped to Russia for sale. Boeing has parts of their plane built around the world and assembles it in USA. We live in a global market place, who ever produces it cheapest and the bestest gets the business. So, if Sony chips are the best, and they have proven to be, then Nikon will use them. Zeiss makes auto focus lenses for only one camera manufacture that I know of, Sony. Interesting that Canon and Nikon are left out. Maybe Canon and Nikon do not want to pay the price Zeiss wants.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Dr is only one small part of camera performance.
Canon lenses have been smoking Nikon for over 25 years now with the EOS lenses.Nikon has finally figured out the electronic diaphragm system on a couple of lenses. Most are still very unpredictable mechanical slapping a primitive lever guessing at what the opening will be for each shot. Canon has stepping motors and has had USM from nearly the beginning while Nikon is still struggling with this technology. There are many other technical leading things on Canon that Nikon still can only dream of so yes that one small item of DR (Not even Nikon technology because they can't even do it but depend on Sony) exceeds Canon in lower ISOs. I read reports in magazines where Canon and Nikon DR is near equal from about 1600 on.

Vladimir200 Loc: Beaumont, Ca.

Here is a comparison completed on January 5 by Photographylife.com; most professional reviewers are giving the Nikon top grades albeit the reviews are without benefit of the actual camera thus far: https://photographylife.com/nikon-d500-vs-canon-7d-mark-ii

Tony Northrop also did a review and gives the Nikon D500 rave reivews and he is a Canon shooter.

Scott Kelby hasn't reviewed the Nikon D500 yet but in a recent KelbyOne show, the few remarks he made on the Nikon were somewhat negative. He switched from Nikon to Canon awhile ago and Canon now sponsors his show so we may not get an impartial review from him.