GEAR TESTS: NIKON D500

Jim Decker CEO: Backscatter Underwater Video & Photo

The Nikon D500 is the long awaited (8 years!) update to the extremely popular D300. With a gap that long you can't even begin to compare lineage between the 2 cameras as so much has changed in technology to make any comparison meaningless. Everything is a massive improvement. One similarity is the tough as nails build quality. Make no mistake this is a pro level camera body designed to take whatever extreme conditions that you're going to throw at it. Will it survive a total flood? No, but with the weather sealing it can stand quite a few splashes.

With all the recent mirrorless cameras that have come out in the past couple of years I haven't really had a chance to shoot SLR too much. I have to say that I have missed having an optical viewfinder for wide-angle photography. Framing a highly backlit scene with an optical viewfinder is much easier too see as your eye is physically looking at the scene throughout the lens as opposed to a mirrorless camera that composes off the screen. In a heavily backlit situation the screen on the mirrorless will show objects in the foreground as dark silhouettes, making it difficult to tell your exact composition. Also the focus is faster than I have seen with recent mirrorless cameras, making getting the shot easier.

For the turtle shot I used AFC with 153 point focus. I was able to hold down the AF-ON button and fire away at will while the camera tracked the focus of the nearest focus point, keeping everything super sharp as the turtle moved throughout the frame. This allowed me to fire shot after shot rapidly to give me lots of great shots to choose from for that 1 perfect shot.

The auto focus with the 105mm macro lens was ridiculously quick and accurate. Even when a critter unexpectedly moved and I focused on the background, the focus snapped back in instantly. This level of performance continued to work with a super macro wet lens. Usually a super macro wet mount lens will make it tough for the camera to achieve autofocus due to the extremely small depth of field and extreme amount of defocusing. Most times looking throughout the viewfinder shows no discernible objects due to the non-existent depth of field, just showing a blob of color, but the D500 had no problem focusing even in these extreme conditions.

About the only disappointing aspect of the D500 is the video implementation. While it does shoot 4K video, it does it on a much smaller area of the sensor. It's a 1.5 crop factor, making the total crop 2.25 from a full frame camera. This makes the resulting video much less wider than in photo mode. While this won't work for serious video shooters, I can say that anyone wanting to pick up some video at a spur of the moment will be able to pull off decent looking videos. I was able to pull off a custom white balance even as deep as 45 feet and have accurate looking color, but sometimes it took multiple attempts, sometimes many, to execute the white balance.

Pulling off successful underwater photos requires lots of shots on the spur of the moment to get the one shot that works. High performance photography is what this camera is all about. Super fast focus and fast rapid fire shooting are the difference between getting the shot and not. On top of the performance, the image quality is top notch compared to just about any APS-C sensor camera on the market, and will stand up against quite a few full frame cameras too. I would not have been able to get the shots I got this week without the D500.

Andy Sallmon Aquatica Team Member

The wait is finally over! Of all the latest cameras to hit the marketplace in the past year, perhaps the most anticipated is the Nikon D500, and for good reason. Nikon's latest DX sensor, "crop frame", APS-C prosumer effort so outshines their last rendition, the D300s, that it isn't even fair to compare the two cameras. So Nikon fans rejoice, the D500 is all that they promised it would be and more. I got to spend a number of dives with this new "speed demon" in Aquatica's latest housing for it, the AD500, and here's what I found.

Starting with the camera, the D500's list of improvements is impressive. Nikon has packed a lot into it and not just pixels. The D500 has an incredible ISO range of 100 - 51,000 that is expandable all the way up to 1,640,000. When I heard that, I thought it was a joke at first, but this camera is capable of over 1 million ISO. Beyond that, the body also boasts a 10FPS continuous shooting rate at up to 200 14 bit Raw frames, 20.9 megapixels, 4K video resolution and a feature very important to underwater photographers, a 100%, 1x magnified viewfinder.  But wait, there's more! The dual card slot takes not only SDHC cards, but also the new super fast XQD cards, giving it the fast read and write speeds.

Underwater the D500 was amazing! Shot after shot, faster than my YS-250 strobes could recycle, (which is under almost instantaneous when powered down) the D500's autofocus locked on to turtles and grouper with laser-like accuracy. This thing is super fast! And it should be, as it shares the same 153 point AF sensor, 180,000 pixel RGB meter and Expeed 5 processor that was built into Nikon's top notch pro level D5, of course at less than 1/3 the price.

Add the D500 to the new, "tough as nails", Aquatica AD500 housing and you get a perfect pro level pairing. The housing is well thought out. Ergonomically, it is the easiest D500 housing to hold since it uses Aquatica's comfortably fitting and time-tested sturdy grips. All of the most important controls were accessible without taking my eye off of the subject. Shutter speed, aperture and ISO, were all easy to find while keeping my eye on the marine life, through the viewfinder.

Aquatica uses a special extended ISO lever instead of just a hard to find button. It sits slightly below the right thumb while holding the grip. This makes ISO reset easy to change on the fly. Simply tap the lever down with your thumb to access the ISO menu and then dial the knob to change it. Tap the lever again and you are set. Both aperture and shutter speed control knobs are good sized and are also on the right side of the housing. These controls are interchangeable in Nikon's menu. One is low, (aperture in my case) reachable by the middle finger while maintaining right grip hold and the other one high (shutter speed) and back, controlled by the right thumb. Access to the AF ON lever for autofocus is also close by the right grip and thumb operable. Toping off the great ergonomics and easy to locate essential controls is Aquatica's durable double layered anodized and powder coated finish. It's easy to see why their housings are the choice of so many professionals, wreck/tech, cave divers and the preferred housing system for the US Navy Combat Camera teams.  The new Nikon D500, with Aquatica housing is fast, tough and agile and is everything I want in an underwater crop frame system.

Vladimir Mladenovic Subal Production Manager

As a representative of Subal, I was very happy to be a part of the staff of the biggest underwater photography workshop in the world, The Digital Shootout.  To be there with over 60 underwater photographers from all over the world is a great opportunity for Subal, and also a big pleasure for myself as a professional underwater photographer and production manager for Subal Underwater Housings.

This year, as part of the demo equipment partners, we brought the newest models of Subal products that all photographers had a chance to try in demo gear. The new ND500 for Nikon D500 that I personally tested and shot during the event was something that was really impressive! Usually, I never shoot with a cropped sensor camera and fisheye lens, but the combination of the Nikon D500 and 16mm 2.8 D fisheye lens for wide photography is something that really was amazing! Fast shutter speed and great ISO handling in low light conditions was on a very high level. For this setup, I used the Subal ND500 with new built-in Subal TTL for Sea&Sea D2 strobes. Also, one of the biggest changes on this housing is the new locking system that is now easier to use with the same results of perfect water-proof sealing.

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