Nikon D500 Anticipation

Nikon D500 DSLR

  In a blatant violation of my advice to photographers at the start of the year (Five Tips for 2016), I pre-ordered the Nikon D500 and the 16-80mm lens.  According to B&H, my D500 bundle is working its way to me and should arrive early next week.  The timing of this should work out well, as my poor Sigma 17-70 air to air lens is getting pretty beat up and needs to go in for a reconditioning.  

  What am I most excited about?  


  Well, for starters it is NOT the great burst capability of the camera.  That will be very cool, and undoubtedly valuable when shooting air to air with military aircraft

  Nor am I going crazy over the wireless image transfer. (I am a HUGE fan of the wireless transfer, and have integrated it into my on-site workflow.)

  Does the new Radio Frequency (RF) Speedlight control keep me up at night with anticipation?  Nope! (Although I will admit that as soon as I can budget an SB-5000 into the gear bag, or get an NPS loaner, I’ll start playing with it.)

  Believe it or not, it is the sensor that excites me the most on this camera.  

  To put it in the words of my friend and fellow aviation photographer Jose’ “Fuji” Ramos – “This thing makes it almost too easy”.  Now, we have all had “those people” walk up to us as we’re sitting on the flightline (or at a waterfall, or wedding) – they take one look at our equipment and say, “Oh yeah, your photographs must be awesome, just look at all your gear, right?”  So, I do know that a new sensor will not turn my out of focus, poorly-composed images into award winners.  But what I do know is that the shots I have seen coming out of the pre-production models have been nothing short of beautiful.  To put it in perspective, they appear to be the same “generational” leap as from the D7100 to the D7200. (which I still credit to the lack of a low-pass filter and the EXPEED 4 engine.)   Why am I so willing to give up 3.3 megapixels in my move to the D500?  Because after looking at images side-by-side, the difference is staggering.   Do I have any of these images to compare, yet?  Certainly not, but I’ll be posting them here (and on Facebook) just so all of you pixel-peepers can see the difference first-hand.


  For those of you who just have to compare specifications and numbers, Nikon has given you the following DX-specific document to help put the D500 side by side with the D7200 and the previous DX flagship model, the D300s.

Nikon's comparison between DX models (links to Nikon USA site)

Is anyone else anxiously awaiting the arrival of their D500?  If so, what features interest you the most?