The Nikon D500

Tulsa World news photographer Ian Maule photographed me in the media area at the Big 12 Championship football game at AT&T Stadium in Dallas Dec. 19.
Tulsa World news photographer Ian Maule photographed me in the media area at the Big 12 Championship football game at AT&T Stadium in Dallas Dec. 19.

Photographer Kyle Phillips at one of our sister newspapers, The Norman Transcript, was out of action recently, so he offered to let me borrow their new Nikon D500 digital SLR since I was slated to shoot the college football Big 12 Championship game in Dallas on December 19, and I accepted.

The Nikon D500 stands tall on its large vertical grip. The grip adds a battery, and, more significantly, a better handling experience for me and my long hands.
The Nikon D500 stands tall on its large vertical grip. The grip adds a battery, and, more significantly, a better handling experience for me and my long hands.

The D500 is a professional-level 20-megapixel camera. It is a neat camera, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to a news  or sports photographer in a minute, but it’s not a game-changer.

The Ada Cougars took on the Shawnee Wolves Dec. 18, and I used the D500 to photograph it. This image was made at ISO 10,000, and the noise is there, but controllable.
The Ada Cougars took on the Shawnee Wolves Dec. 18, and I used the D500 to photograph it. This image was made at ISO 10,000, and the noise is there, but controllable.
The Vanoss Lady Wolves celebrate an overtime victory again Latta earlier this month. Shot with the Nikon D500 at ISO 10,000, it's a good clean image with minimal noise.
The Vanoss Lady Wolves celebrate an overtime victory again Latta earlier this month. Shot with the Nikon D500 at ISO 10,000, it’s a good clean image with minimal noise.
  • The Nikon D500 is an incremental upgrade to the Nikon D300S, two of which I use every day. The main improvement the D500 makes is high ISO noise. Frame rate and pixel count are up, but not enough to really matter.
  • The ISO dial has traded places with the exposure mode dial, which I really don’t like, and not just because I’m used to buttons where they are. The mode dial belongs on the right next to the shutter and aperture dial and the shutter release. I kind of think Nikon engineers move stuff arbitrarily. Real photographers set their file type once, mostly on the day they get the camera, and leave it there forever. Only dilletants and dabblers change file types regularly, so as far as I’m concerned, this button could disappear into the menu.
  • I had to shoot JPEGs instead of RAW files, since my laptop at work has an older version of Adobe Lightroom that won’t read the newest RAW files. The D500 makes very decent JPEGs.
  • The D500 has a swinging/tilting rear display as well as 4K video capability, a feature that makes little difference to me, since I make short videos to go with news and sports, but would make a big difference to videographers.
  • The D500 is equipped with SnapBridge, but I tried several times and got the message, “Pairing unsuccessful. Make sure D500_XXX is turned on, in range, and is ready to pair.” That’s typical in a world of incompetent coding. My Fujifilm X-T10, a camera of the same era as the D500, did it without a hitch.
  • The D500 has two card slots, one for SD, and one for XQD, a high-speed replacement for CompactFlash cards, but I don’t have any of these cards and have never used them, and I find that the photography community regards this format as a dead end.
  • The D500 isn’t a particularly popular camera. I have only seen one other one, in the hands of Coalgate High School yearbook advisor Kathy Ingram.
  • I found that 10 frames per second and a nearly unlimited buffer resulted in shooting a lot more frames than I usually do, with little impact on the quality of my product. So many files of the same thing just tends to choke my workflow.
Engineers love to fix what isn't broken, in this case moving the mode button to the left and the ISO button to the right.
Engineers love to fix what isn’t broken, in this case moving the mode button to the left and the ISO button to the right.

At the Big 12 Championship game, I brought my AF Nikkor 300mm f/2.8, betting on needing the f/2.8, but the lights were very bright and even. If I had to do it again, I might use my AF-S 300mm f/4, a much newer and somewhat sharper lens.

Here is a nice tight crop from Saturday's action at the Big 12 Championship. My 300mm f/2.8 is sharp and capable, but my 300mm f/4 is even sharper, and faster-focusing.
Here is a nice tight crop from Saturday’s action at the Big 12 Championship. My 300mm f/2.8 is sharp and capable, but my 300mm f/4 is even sharper, and faster-focusing.

I pressed the D500 into service, and found that it does what a digital camera should: make photography easier by getting out of the way of the photographer. I was very glad to use it for a while, and really enjoyed it. Thanks again to Kyle for offering to let me use it. I know he will make many great images with it over the years.

The Nikon D500 has a flipping rear LCD display, an excellent option if you are making a lot of video, but almost entirely unused by me while I had this camera.
The Nikon D500 has a flipping rear LCD display, an excellent option if you are making a lot of video, but almost entirely unused by me while I had this camera.