Nikon D500 review: The D500 scores on almost all counts

After 6 years neglecting the power APS-C action photographer, Nikon released the mostly impressive D500 dSLR, the little sister to the pro full-frame D5. With the same autofocus and metering systems as that model, a high-sensitivity 20.9-megapixel CMOS sensor, a large tilting touchscreen and 4K video, it hits most of the essential targets for a camera in its class. Only a couple of flaws knock it slightly off course.

8.4

Nikon D500

$800 at Amazon

$1,600 at B&H Photo-Video

$1,500 at Walmart

The Good

The Nikon D500 is fast with excellent continuous-shooting and autofocus performance, its 4K video support is a welcome novelty for its dSLR price class and, of course, there's the great photo quality.

The Bad

Terrible wireless file-transfer and remote-control app, and its Live View (contrast) autofocus could use a boost.

The Bottom Line

There's tons to like about the Nikon D500, from its fast shooting and excellent image quality to its broad feature set and streamlined design. But it still falls short with its Live View autofocus and seriously subpar wireless file transfer and shooting operation.

The D500's body runs $2,000 (£1,730, AU$3,500); the camera also comes in a kit with the DX 16-80mm f2.8-4mm lens for $2,600 (£2,480, AU$4,500). Unlike a lot of kit lenses I've seen, this one's pretty good, and has a useful general-purpose focal-length range equivalent to 24-120mm. The lens is sharp, with a reasonable maximum-aperture range that should match the needs of people who'd be buying the body and want something for routine situations.

Joining the 1-million ISO club

It takes more than just raw speed to optimize a camera for continuous shooting. You need the ability to take decent photos at high sensitivities. That's the only way you can use action-stopping fast shutter speeds and sharpness-maximizing narrower apertures under a lot of conditions; most activities don't take place in bright, direct sunlight. The D500 delivers a maximum sensitivity of ISO 1,640,000 -- highest in its price range -- though the camera's native range stops at ISO 51200, leaving five stops in the expanded range.

Nikon D500 full-resolution photo samples

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JPEGs look clean through ISO 6400. At ISO 6400 you can still process the raws to obtain more detail, though the trade-off is a lot of "grain" and hot pixels in dark areas. Between ISO 12800 and ISO 102400 (Hi 1) in JPEGs you can see some smearing and processed color noise, but it still retains modest amount of detail. Beyond that, you can still get recognizable photos at small sizes. Processing the raw files doesn't help much; I suspect Nikon's performing some in-camera wizardry to produce what it does. Overall, though, the similarly priced Nikon D750, with its full-frame sensor, still produces better photos

The color rendering and white balance are excellent. Its default Standard Picture Control increases contrast and you lose some highlight and shadow detail, and midtones are compressed, but the occasional hue shift is minor.

The D500 is the first camera to bring 4K video to a consumer-priced dSLR, and the quality is quite good for an APS-C sensor; sharp, with a solid dynamic range and the same excellent color. You can see a lot of noise in shadows above ISO 6400, but overall it's peachy.

Analysis samples

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Rat-a-tat-tat

It's fast. Really fast for its price class, with concomitantly fast and accurate autofocus. For single shots, the cheaper Canon EOS 7D Mark II performs about the same (our charts overstate small differences in performance). Part of the slight lag stems from the 16-80mm lens, which is reasonably speedy but doesn't drive fast enough to keep up.

At continuous shooting, however, with both autoexposure and continuous autofocus enabled, the D500 sustains a rate of 10.7 frames per second for an unlimited number of JPEGs and more than 40 raw+JPEG shots to the XQD card before slowing; with an SD card, the rate is a still-nothing-to-sneeze-at 10fps.

And the autofocus keeps up quite well -- unsurprising given that it has the same AF system as the D5 -- though you really have to customize it to the type of action for best results. The camera can focus in really dim conditions, too. There's a one-shot exposure lag (for instance, if a bicyclist moves from light to shadow the first shot in the shadow was usually underexposed) but that's typical in cameras that support AE in maximum-speed burst.

Continuous shooting seemed to eat up the battery life and it depleted faster than I expected, but that may have been caused by the 90-plus degrees F temperature when I tested outdoors (that's 32 C for the rest of the world). Battery life is still pretty good, though. I can also attest that the dust-and-weather-sealed body is impervious to sweat.

The one blot on the D500's speed record is its Live View autofocus, which is pretty slow: the shot lag in good light is about 1.3 seconds. And the continuous AF in Live View when shooting video isn't great. It hunts too much and feels too ratchety. I didn't try all the settings, though, so it's possible there's a combination that adjusts more smoothly and quickly. The display does support touch focus, though, which compensates somewhat.

Almost everything you need

The camera's sturdy and comfortable to hold for long periods, with an intelligent control layout and a big, bright viewfinder. It has 4 banks of Nikon's typical array of customizable settings.

Its feature set has most everything you need in this class of camera. That includes a mic and

The camera's only real weakness is its wireless operation. Snapbridge is Nikon's branding for its wireless file transfer system, but I think the company spent more time and money on the branding than it did on the implementation. Though the D500 adds Bluetooth for a persistent, low-power wireless connection, the app isn't even robust enough for consumers much less the advanced users of this camera. (And I had to delete it from my phone because even disabled it was draining the battery.)

It seems like it's predominantly intended as a utility for uploading photos to Nikon's redundant file-sharing service. The remote shooting is really lame -- it's just a shutter. And the iOS app isn't even slated to come out until August. As Nikon has perpetually lagged in its wireless implementation, I don't have high hopes for improvement.

Conclusion

The Nikon D500 is 95 percent of a terrific camera. I enjoy photographing with it, the image quality is excellent for its sensor class, the feature set has all the essentials plus a bit more and it's fast in most shooting situations. For action stills and video it's the best dSLR for the money. I just wish it had a grown-up wireless implementation and faster Live View operation.

Comparative specifications