Barry Clemmons Photography

<p>I received my D500 today and had a brief amount of time this afternoon to set it up and take some sample shots. I plan to use it for high school sports, so low light performance is important. Some initial thoughts based on the little time I worked with it today is very promising. The AF speed seems to match that of my D5 as expected. It feels very solid and well built much like the D300/S. The shutter is slightly quieter than the D5. The D5 is more of a loud "clunk' sound while the D500 is a more crisp "snap" sound. I know that is subjective, but that is how I heard it. The Auto WB settings are the same as the D5 giving what I call cleaner colors when left in the default setting. The grip is slightly deeper than the D5, but still provides solid handling even for smaller hands.</p> <p>I wanted to provide some comparison shots at ISO 6400 comparing it to the D300S and the D750 for noise. All three were shot with High ISO Noise Reduction set to Normal using a 70-200mm VR II lens at F/2.8. First I will show the full photo of each and then show close crops to view the noise better. Here is the D300S shot.</p><div></div>

<p>Walker, I am a little confused. Your initial post above seems to indicate you are leaning towards switching to Canon due to a feature you value. Nothing wrong with that at all if it is an important feature you would use on a regular basis. Then later you say you will likely upgrade your D200 this year and then list over $20,000 worth of Nikon gear you might purchase. Personally I would first decide if I wanted to make the move to Canon and if so use that money for Canon gear. Cost aside, I also would not want to try to work with two different platforms with vastly different menus and button layouts. But then again I am old and easily confused. :)<br> As far as KR, maybe you don't hold him in as low esteem as many since as you pointed out you have not visited his site in a year or two. When almost every "review" states that the particular piece of gear is "the best" camera, lens, flash, laptop etc. ever made it is hard for me to take it seriously. Great for a laugh, yes. But so is Beetle Bailey. As pointed out it is how he makes his money. He also has a heavy bias towards Canon and Apple products.</p>

<p>I generally only do certain action sequences using high frame-rate (punts, place kicks, QB passing, and pass receptions). To my knowledge I have never had one of those frames out of sequence when sorted by date/time for renaming. The time for each photo is shown in hundredths of a second which should eliminate that possibility. I guess I have just been lucky, or perhaps certain software programs only look at seconds or tenths of a second.</p>

<p>I use two cameras to shoot high school football and the images need to be posted in the correct order on my website. I have a Nikon GP-1 GPS unit on each camera so that the time is identical on each. As you pointed out you can view the files by date taken, but they don't stay in order when you rename them. I use Adobe Bridge to rename the files and keep them in chronological order. I'm not aware of a way to do that using NX-D.</p>

<p>Lots of azalea blooms this year.</p><div></div>

<p>I thought it was two gummy bears atop melting marshmallows. :)</p>

<p>Andy, there was some confusion apparently between Nikon and my dealer as far as the free card and reader. This has been resolved and they are in transit.</p>

<p>By the way, the free XQD card and reader are on the way to me. Apparently Nikon made the announcement about the freebies after some of the initial orders were placed creating some confusion.<br> Also, thanks Shun for correcting the title. Although the D5 is great, it is not my hand. :)</p>

<p>I agree about the natural color it captured. The other thing is the shot shows a lot more detail than I could actually see with the naked eye. For ISO 12800 it is also very clean considering I did nothing more than convert it from NEF to jpeg with no additional processing. So far I am very pleased with what I am getting from the D5.</p>

<p>Lannie, is this what you are looking for? It is shot handheld, so there may be a little blur. I used the 24-70mm (non VR model) at f/2.8 on the D5. It was ISO 12800 and 1/13 sec.</p><div></div>

<p>Lannie, I certainly agree with your assessment and am very pleased thus far. I will see if I can get a shot under one of our street lights to compare.<br> Eric, I don't have anything like that coming up but I will try to think of something to match those conditions.</p>

<p>Chip, yes both are set to Auto WB. However the D5 has three Auto WB settings. The default is AUTO_0 and is called "Keep white (reduce warm colors)". I think that is the difference we are seeing. There is also AUTO_1 "Normal" and AUTO_2 "Keep warm lighting colors'. I probably have several weeks of learning curve to get it set up the way I want. I may even have to read the manual (ugh!).</p>

<p>By the way, Brad Hill has a very good article today concerning how the low ISO DR story on the D5 is being misinterpreted. It is well worth the read and will show it is really a non-issue.</p>

<p>I need to play around some more with the D5, but my very quick initial impressions are:<br> -The AF system will allow more "keepers" for fast action sports<br> -I will now be comfortable shooting in the 6400-12800 + ISO range whereas with the D3S I stayed mostly around 6400 and occasionally 8000 for high school sports<br> -I am not concerned about having "only" 12 stops of DR at low ISO<br> -I will need to get comfortable with some of the buttons being moved<br> -I can't say for certain that it is worth spending the money to move up from a D4/D4S since I have never shot with one, but for me it definitely is from a D3S</p>

<p>And here is the 100% crop.</p><div></div>

<p>Here is one shot at ISO 16000.</p><div></div>

<p>Here is a 100% crop.</p><div></div>

<p>I too think the low ISO DR "issue" is ridiculous. I would venture to guess that most who purchase the D5 would rarely shoot at anywhere near base ISO. If that is what one is looking for, then save a lot of money and purchase the D810.<br> I moved the D5 over to my 600mm f/4 and captured a few shots. By the way, as far as AF it was instantaneous. Noticeably faster than my D3S. I thought I would do one shot at ISO 100. Conditions were overcast skies for this shot.</p> <div></div>

<p>Here is the shot at 100%.</p><div></div>

<p>Lannie, no problem with me at all. I purchase what I need for the things I shoot. It was time to upgrade from my D3S. I skipped the D4 and D4S because the small improvement wasn't worth the money to me. I shoot a lot of high school sports in not so perfect lighting so two generations of even slight high ISO improvement will help. The other reason is for the improved AF system which should help with football. Anyway, some had asked about shots up to ISO 32000 so I just got a shot of a crow at that ISO. I have a lot going on today so I am trying to work some of these shots in when I have a few minutes. These were shot in RAW and then converted to jpeg in NX-D with no extra processing. It was shot using the 200-500mm lens because it was handy when I saw the crow in the backyard. The second shot is at 100%.</p><div></div>

<p>Both photos were shot as a NEF file and converted to JPG using Nikon NX-D with no additional processing applied.</p>

<p>Here is the D5 at ISO 12800. I will try to get more posted tomorrow afternoon. I am shooting at ISO 12800 because that is my target for high school sideline football.</p><div></div>

<p>I have been having some issues getting the D5 files converted, but here is the D3S at ISO 12800.</p><div></div>

<p>I just unboxed my D5 and the first surprise is.......there is no free XQD card and reader. I would be interested to hear from someone else in the U.S. who ordered one to see if they received the freebies.<br> I am charging the battery now and plan to run a quick high ISO test a little later and compare it to my D3S.</p>

<p>Andy, sorry you won't have yours in time for the basketball game. I am in the U.S. and mine will be delivered this afternoon. Most here were shipped last Friday or yesterday. I've also read that some in Canada were received late last week. What did you guys do to tick off Nikon? :)</p>