Looking back to last year Nikon announced the D500 and D5 in December and I had my D500 in my hands in March as I had pre-ordered and was at the top of the list. With the D850 just out not to long ago Nikon needs a few months get it sold before bringing out a D750 replacement.

So what will the D760 be or not be?  From all reports I have read the new D760 will be a full frame 24mp camera with a new sensor that delivers even better high iso clean images and with even better low light focus down to a lower light level.

What Will a D760 Be?

Basically, I think the new D760 will be like the D500 body with a full frame chip in it. That will include the back touchscreen that flips out with the same very nice touch controls and swipe features. Then with the D500s new focus selector joystick that I have become so accustomed to using now and the better button placement making it a much better camera to use.

I would love for it to have a base ISO of 64 to help nock down the sun on bright days and I hope they move the shutter speed up from only 4000 to 8000 to make it more usable shooting wide open with  1.4 and 1.8 lenses on bright days. And the larger the better viewfinder. I also expect it to shoot 4k video and it would be nice if it had a 4k still shooting mode as well.

But what about a full frame Nikon Mirrorless camera? It very overdue and Nikon needs to get one out so will we see a Mirrorless FF or a D760 or both.

If I had to pick one I would love to have a Full Frame Mirrorless as long as it can still use the same lens and still drive the older lens as well and it is fully weather sealed. For shooting portraits, it would be a huge plus to be able to see the real exposure in the electronic viewfinder like you can with Sony cameras and when shooting outdoors like I do most of the time to be able to review your shot image in the view finder would be fantastic blocking out all the sun from washing out the screen. For me, i could at that point never even need to use a back screen unless I am showing an image to a customer for a quick preview.

A Nikon Mirrorless Camera

If Nikon comes out with a Mirrorless camera that uses all new lens and old ones cannot be used then this will be a shame and I would probably never buy it as I have too many lenses including older lens I love using. If they have a special adaptor you can use with order lens I would have to wonder if it will support the older screw drive lens if not then it not for me. If it is all new lens then it will be a very slow system to take off unless it does have an adaptor for other lens and I would hope they will work with all the focus points and not be limited to only a few.

So what will we have next a Nikon D760 or Nikon full-frame Mirrorless. Whatever it is I hope it is soon. As for the D850 to me, it just cost too much money and has too many MPs I do not need for anything I ever shoot so that is not on my list of cameras to ever buy I would take a used D4 over the D850.

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Yes the Nikon D850 is the new rock star camera of all cameras. Great image quality, Fast focus fantastic low light focus and more. But what does having a 45.7 megapixel mean to your real photography everyday work you shoot. Will the New D850 make you a better photographer no. Will the D850 produce images much better the other Nikon cameras no not really, Will the new Nikon D850 produce better-looking prints well no not really unless you are printing super large wall murals and most people are not doing that. Will the D850 give you better focus well not really if you like to shoot using 1.4 and 1.8 and 2.8 lens and you shoot wide open as with this many megapixels it makes the camera harder to focus so you will end up with more out of focus images then before vs other lower megapixel cameras.

To use the new Nikon D850 you will need to buy more cards to shoot on as the large 45.7 megapixel RAW files it creates are huge and take up a lot of space. Then you will need to buy a lot more hard drives to store your images on as the files will eat up your hard drive space in no time and this will be ongoing year after year costing you more and more money all the time.

Editing D850 RAW files this big is going to be very slow in Lightroom and Photoshop and every other editing program so your workflow is going to go much slower using the 45.7 megapixel Nikon D850. This includes loading images off your camera card into your computer, then slower to load into a program like Lightroom, then slow to edit each image and then slower to export the edited image to jpgs. Then slower to back up all the images so all this equals slow slow slow editing workflow. Is it worth it?

What will you gain by using the D850 camera body?

Lets say you are a wedding and portrait photographer and sell prints to your customers all the time will the D850 help you in any way VS say a 24MP D750 camera or a D5 or D4 and so on. The real answer will be not really, in fact, it will cost you more money to shoot the Nikon D850 and take you more time to edit and work with the images.

What about print quality?

Yes what about it do you use a photo lab for most all of your printing? what is the size prints you sell to customers the most. With everyone nowadays wanting the digital files print sales for photographers has dropped over the years and the most common size print people think is a large print is a 16×20 or a 20×30 print or gallery wrap. Ok well a 12MP camera can make all of these print sizes without any problems and the prints look amazing and this is with cropping in as well.

How long have you been a photographer and why that matters

Many newer photographers that have been only shooting for 2 to 10 years cannot remember that us photographers that have been shooting digital from day one going back to 2MP cameras have been making and selling prints from digital files for our customers for years. If the prints did not look good we would have never been able to sell them and if that the case digital cameras would have never evolved to what they are today.

Some examples by the time we hit 6MP cameras like the Nikon  D100 and D70 and D40 you could print a 16×20 print that looked amazing very full of detail and sharp we had no problem selling them to customers at all. Then we moved up to 8mp then 10mp and then when the Nikon D3 and D700 arrived at 12MP most photographers thought that was the holey grail or the best you every need. I used the D3 and D700 camera for years and we sold every print size you can think of including have many billboard made from our images. we printed hundreds of 24×36 prints from the D700 12MP files selling them also a lot of metal prints and wood prints. Never not once have we had a customer say it looks like the resolution was not good enough as the prints looked amazing.

The difference from a 6MP 16×20 to a 12MP 16×20 was not all that much as the 6MP 16×20 was quite good. What you would see is better color due to the newer cameras having better color and cleaner high iso less noise in the prints also do to the better cameras taking cleaner images t0 start with.

Now going from a 12MP to a 20 or 24MP camera for the same print sizes you see almost no difference if any at all as with the 12MP size you could already print amazing looking images that are very clean and full of details and sharp. But now you have almost two times the amount of MP so you can even print larger like in the 40×60 range with no problem if you can find a place to print them for you and you can find a customer that wants to order and pay you for that print size.

Looking at the largest average print size people sell from weddings and portraits a 16 to 24mp camera can handle all the print sizes with no problem and the cost to use the camera is less than using a camera like the Nikon D850 at  45.7 megapixels that will eat away at your wallet every time you use it and slow down your workflow.

Who is the Nikon D850 for?

In reality, a very small group of photographers who do print very large images like for some commercial agency photographers, Some landscape photographers who print and sell full wall murals. But your average landscape photographers will not need this many MPs for anything. At this time that is all, I can think of. Most large format inkjet printers use RIP software to make any size print you want larger MPs is not needed. Also, many print places will not even take in that large of a file or if they do they reduce the file before printing so it does not crash the system.

Would you want to shoot a wedding and bring home 1500 large 45.7 megapixel image to edit and store? I know I would not – just to sell maybe one 16×20 or 24×36 print and lots of small 4×6, 5×7,  and a few 8x10s. You can do that with a 12mp or 20 to 254mp camera already all day long.

Or for portraits why would you ever need 45.7 megapixels for shooting people portraits when you can print every size you ever sell very easy with a 20 to 24MP camera and can crop in as much you need and the cost to use it is less. 

Look at cameras like the Nikon flagship D5 why is it not 47MP because it does not need to be for anything most every user will ever print.

So to wrap this up  I see so many people running out and ordering a Nikon D850 and many of them are newer photographers that have not even made many large prints yet at all. They are ordering a camera thinking it is going to make them a better photographer when it is not. If they can edit and get great prints now from a 12 to 24 MP camera then they are not going to get anything better from the Nikon D850. When it comes down to it if you take the same photo with a 6, 12, 20, 24 and 47MP camera and print them all at the same size like a 16×20 and place them side by side on a table and mix them up you will not be able to tell one from the other and none of your customers will either so what are you paying for when you get more MPs you don’t need.

Whats next I hope to see a new Nikon D750 replacement out soon maybe a D760 with a new version of a 20 to 24MP chip in it and the features found on the newer D500 like the focus joystick and flip out display and touchscreen. That will be my next camera or a New Nikon mirrorless camera I would love to have that next. I am also looking at the Fuji X-T2 as a second camera but they have no FF camera.

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I do not like to post a review based on a camera till I have had a good amount of time really shooting with it in many styles and outings and not just shooting one thing or kind of photography.

I used my D500 for shooting low light events shooting at iso 2000 and 3200 using bounce flash. Shot an baseball game with it outdoors, Shot dirt bike riding in a dirt bowl in midday hot sun, Shot horse racing with it and a zoom lens, Went to a wildlife park and shot birds and other animals with it a few different times, Then took it down by a water area for some shooting of boats and other subjects, Shot at a Botanical gardens shooting flowers and plants and then went and shot a few Model portrait sessions using a lot of off-camera lighting. We then went on a year-long RV trip we are still on as I write this sitting in our Rv in a park in TX.

So I have covered a lot of ground shooting with my D500 and editing all the files for a long time now. I feel like I now know the camera very well using it this much and how it shoots and what to expect from the images it produces I shoot only RAW all the time.

I am a long time now Nikon shooter for a long time now moving from Canon to Nikon when the D3 first had come out and then buying two D700 bodys I also owned a D40, D70 and a D7200 and have owned the D750 and D300 and now own and shoot with the D500 as well and I own the Nikon one system V2 and J5 both very fun little cameras..

The Nikon D500 is such a better camera in every way over the Sony a6300 I had the more you shoot with the D500 the more you love it and the more you start to get to know how it works the more you even love it more. It is the best Cropped camera hands down. If you are a pro shooter and make all or a good amount of your income from shooting the D500 is the clear choose for a cropped monster camera that will get you the shots you need with no hesitation in a quality body that will last.

After using two D700 body’s for years as my main cameras for weddings and portraits I wanted to see how the D500 rates to them for high iso shooting and image quality. I put a 35mm on the D700 full frame camera and a 24mm on the D500 so they matched the same zoom range for the most part for some test shots. I shot both cameras in a controlled environment with the same settings and same metering and ISO settings all in manual.

The end result was not as good as i was hoping for but was very good. The old Nikon D700 still produces cleaner images at all the higher ISO ranges even starting at iso 400 by a little bit. ISO 5000 on the D700 looks like ISO 4000 on the D500. I use to shoot a lot of MMA fights in some very dark bars and other places and i shot with the D700 and D750 at ISO 5000 and sometimes at as high as ISO 6400 so i was disappointed to see that a cropped D500 has still not come up to the now very old over tens old full frame D700 for high ISO shooting and clean images but it is close. So for this kind of event i would still be better off to shoot with one of my old D700 cameras or a D750 body. For my weddings, portraits and other events the quality from the D500 is just fine it is cleaner then the D7200 I had and even more cleaner than the Sony a6300 I also had. At the lower ISO ranges the D500 is excellent and the colors are outstanding so i am keeping it to use as my one of my main cameras. I am hoping Nikon comes out with a new version of the D750 a D760 soon as i will get that to ad to my D500.

Shooting A Low Light Dance Event

A test for the D500 was a dark dance floor area. For this shoot my job was to shoot promo shots for a singer for his new website showing him singing and people having fun dancing.

It was a VFW hall all older people dancing having a good time to my client singing and playing guitar. It was a good sized room and they turn most all the lights out for the dancing so it was very dark to shoot in a great test for low light focus.

I used my Nikon 24-120 F4 lens I love the range I get with this and I used a AD360 bulb flash system. I bounced the flash off the white ceiling to flood light in any area I was shooting so i never used any direct flash on anyone to bother them dancing. This being my first outing shooting with the D500 Some of the things I noticed was i loved the new placement of the ISO button this is so easy now once i started getting use to its new place on the camera. Then the focus point joystick I started using as for years now I have been a point and recompose shooter but with this new joy stick it just felt right to start using it and i love it now. The joystick is so useful I use it all the etime now for everything i am shooting.

With no focus assist light of any kind being used on the flash or camera i was able to shoot in what i would say is lower light then my old D700 would be able to go down to or the D7200 and for sure much better than the Sony A6300 i had. The D500 locks on focus in very low light and it dose it super fast with no hesitation this camera needs no focus assist red beam or any help at all it is amazing what it can do locking in focus. Even shooting way across the room at 120mm the focus was dead on and fast for every shot.

I started out shooting at ISO 400 and then started pushing it up to 1600 then 2000 and then 3200 as it got darker as they turned the lights down and at 3200 that was all i really needed and i had to turn down the flash very low making my recycle time super fast. At ISO 3200 the images are very good and usable with very good detail in them. After my ISO test VS one of my old FF D700’s i knew i would be good with ISO 3200 and most shooting, i do iso 3200 is more then plenty and i can even go lower when using the 50mm or 85mm prime lens I have or a 2.8 lens.

The over all experience with shooting with the Nikon D500 at this event was very good it felt like i was shooting a full frame camera with the very nice large viewfinder. I also think the way it fits my hand is much better than the D7200 and the little extra weight over the D7200 feels just right and the less weight then the D700 is better as well.

The D500 for Portraits

I have shot a lot of portraits with the D500 camera and it dose a very good job. I have used the 50mm and 85mm 1.8 lens and a 135 F32 manual focus lens for portraits and have been very happy with the output. Even the background blur bokeh can be very good on the D500 even with it being a cropped camera. Here is a photo and as you can see the bokeh is not bad at all.

Below you can see a few sample shots with the Nikon D500 from a few different kinds of shooting.

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