Nikon D7500 Build and handling
Nikon’s DX-format DSLR for enthusiasts fits the best bits of the D500 into a smaller, more affordable body. Andy Westlake puts it through its paces
Nikon is one of the most respected names in photography and is celebrating the centenary of its formation this year. Sadly, though, the firm has had a bumpy ride recently: it was forced to cancel its DL-range of premium compact cameras it announced at the start of 2016, its KeyMission range of action cameras received a rather lukewarm reception, and it appears to have ceased development of its 1-system mirrorless cameras. But even the firm’s harshest critics have to admit that it still makes very fine DSLRs.
Indeed, the Nikon D7500 is exactly the kind of enthusiastfocused high-performance DSLR that the company does best. In essence, it takes the superb 20.9-million-pixel DX sensor from the top- end D500 and drops it into a rather smaller and more portable body based on the older D7200, while adding in a tilting touchscreen and many of the most important design updates we saw in the D500. Nikon says that with its body- only price tag of £1,300, the D7500 won’t replace the £850 D7200, but instead complement it.
Features
With Nikon’s Expeed 5 processor on board, the D7500 offers a standard sensitivity range of ISO 100-51,200, which is expandable up to ISO 1,640,000. As we’ll see, these hugely extended ISO sensitivities don’t give great results, but that shouldn’t mask the fact that this sensor delivers excellent high ISO image quality.
Nikon says the D7500 can shoot at 8 frames per second for 50 raw frames in a burst, which is a significant advance over the D7200’s 27 frames at 6fps. In practice, with a 16GB SanDisk Extreme U3 card rated at 90MB/s, I measured an even
faster rate of 8.2fps, but a slightly smaller buffer of 46 frames using lossless compression. This should still be ample for all but the most trigger-happy of action shooters.
Being a DSLR, the D7500 can track focus at full speed using its 51-point autofocus system, which uses the same phase- detection module as the D7200. Users can also match their specific lenses to their camera with the Auto AF Fine Tune function to give the best focusing accuracy.
Metering employs a 180,000pixel RGB sensor, which is also used for face detection and subject recognition, while feeding information into the AF system to help the camera understand how a subject is moving around the frame. Alongside the usual matrix, centreweighted and spot modes, the D7500 gains Nikon’s highlight-weighted metering. This aims to avoid clipping bright areas of the image to white, allowing the user to make the most of the sensor’s dynamic range when post-processing raw files.
Video shooters will find both 4K and full HD recording to be available, but while the latter uses the full width of the sensor, 4K reads from a 3840x2160-pixel area in the centre, which imposes a 1.5x field- of-view crop. In- camera electronic image stabilisation is available to compensate for shake when shooting handheld, and this has the advantage of being able to correct for rotation around the lens axis, which is important for video but something in-lens stabilisation simply can’t do. It also works with every lens – not just optically stabilised ones – but sadly only functions in full HD mode, not 4K.
Perhaps surprisingly, the D7500 has just a single SD card slot, unlike either the D7200 or the D500. Another limitation is that older manual-focus lenses can only be used in manual- exposure mode, without any metering. While these omissions will disappoint Nikon fans, fundamentally they reflect the fact that the D7000series is no longer top of the firm’s DX line- up: that position is now taken by the D500 instead.
Better news is that the built-in pop-up flash can work with Nikon’s radio- controlled Advanced Wireless Lighting system to operate off- camera Speedlights wirelessly for creative lighting control. Nikon says the EN- EL15a battery should provide 950 shots per charge, and while this is down from 1,110 compared to the D7200, it’ll still be ample for most purposes. In- camera raw processing allows you to tweak images before sharing them, and to this end built-in Wi- Fi and Bluetooth allow connection to a smartphone driven by Nikon’s Snapbridge app. With the D7500 costing around £1,300, you’d expect Nikon to deliver a solid-feeling camera that’s ergonomically sound – and that’s exactly what you get. The new model has a deep grip with a thick rubberised coating that feels extremely secure in your hand, and a weathersealed body that’s compact without being cramped. The camera body measures 135.5x104x72.5mm and weighs 720g – a little heavier than the D7200, but noticeably smaller than the D500.
The control set-up is based on that of the D7200, but in a very welcome change the ISO button is now placed immediately behind the shutter release, as on the D500. This comes at the expense of the D7200’s metering-mode button, which has relocated to the back of the camera, and is a much more sensible prioritisation of these two functions.
Almost every important shooting function can be changed using easy-to-access external controls. There’s an exposure-mode dial on the left shoulder and a drive-mode dial underneath, both of which lock in position to prevent accidental changes. Front and rear electronic dials change the main exposure settings, while the D-pad on the back is used to move the focus area. Key settings such as metering, white balance, autofocus and flash mode have dedicated buttons on the camera body, while two Fn buttons on the front can be customised to suit the user. A press of the ‘i’ button on the camera’s back brings up a short menu of other settings, mostly to do with image processing. I’d have liked to see a usercustomisable quick menu here, as there is on most other cameras at this price point, but the D7500 is so well set up overall that this is a minor complaint.
Viewfinder and screen
The D7500 has a reasonably large and bright optical viewfinder, with 0.94x magnification and 100% coverage of the lens’s field of view. A sensor above the eyepiece automatically switches off the rear screen when you’re using the viewfinder. As well as displaying the most important exposure data in a panel beneath the focusing screen, it’s also possible to overlay gridlines to aid composition or show a dual-axis electronic level, although oddly you’re not allowed to have both at the same time. But naturally, you don’t get any of the advantages of electronic viewing when it comes to accurately previewing exposure, white balance or depth of field before shooting, which has to count as a considerable practical disadvantage for DSLRs compared to mirrorless cameras.
Below the viewfinder is the 3.2in, 922,000- dot LCD, which is an impressively slim unit that tilts up and down while adding little to the depth of the camera. I’d have preferred a fully articulated design like that on the D5600 or Canon EOS 80D, as tilt- only screens are useless when shooting in portrait format. In live view, the screen gives an accurate depiction of how your shots will come out,
with exposure, white balance and depth of field all previewed live. This represents a considerable advantage over older Nikon D7000-series DSLRs, which couldn’t adjust the aperture diaphragm while the camera was in live view.
Alongside touch focus and touch shutter release in live view and video modes, the touchscreen can be used to operate menu selections and browse through images in playback, just like on a smartphone. But overall, touch operation still feels tacked on as an afterthought, and the D7500 lacks features common elsewhere, such as touch focus-point selection when using the viewfinder, or a customisable touch-sensitive control panel you can set up to access your most- used functions.
Autofocus
When it comes to autofocus, it’s very much a tale of two systems. For viewfinder shooting, the D7500 uses a 51-point phasedetection system, with the AF array providing decent coverage by DSLR standards – about 75% of the frame width, and 50% of its height. Autofocus is very fast and decisive, even in low light, and Nikon says it’s sensitive down to -3EV, or effectively moonlight. The D7500 also gains the group-area AF mode previously seen on the D500, which allows multiple AF points to be used for keeping track of a moving subject, and works very effectively.
Switch to live view, though, and it’s a very different story. Nikon is still using a rather basic contrastdetection system, and it’s painfully slow compared to mirrorless cameras or Canon’s Dual Pixel AF system. It’s OK for static subjects, but don’t even think about using it for anything that moves – indeed, Nikon doesn’t even bother offering a continuous-focusing AF- C mode. On a more positive note, though, the AF point can be placed anywhere in the scene, and because focusing uses the image sensor itself, it’s consistently accurate even with fast primes and off- centre subjects.
Seasoned DSLR users will be used to this kind of behaviour, and may well be happy using the two AF systems in a complementary fashion, using live view mostly for accurate manual focus with stationary subjects. But the fact remains that the D7500’s main competitors can all autofocus much quicker when you’re shooting with the rear screen.
Performance
In general use, the D7500 is an impressively accomplished performer that is more than capable of handling almost any photographic situation.
Having shot more than 1,000 images with it across a wide variety of subjects, I rarely found it wanting.
Image quality is very good indeed, with the 20.9MP sensor delivering detailed images at low ISO settings and keeping noise well under control up to about ISO 6400, while giving usable files at settings as high as ISO 51,200. Nikon’s matrix metering generally does a good job, if anything erring on the side of underexposure to protect highlights, which is much more desirable than irrevocably clipping bright highlights.
JPEG colour rendition is by default bright and punchy, even at high ISO settings where colours might start to fade on other cameras. If you want to pep things up even further, then Vivid and Landscape Picture Controls are available, while the Neutral and Portrait settings give more subtle renditions. Nikon also gives a huge amount of control over the image-processing settings, so it should be possible to tweak colour output to match your taste. However, I did find the auto white balance to be a little erratic, with a clear habit of erring too much towards the cool side on bright, sunny blue-sky days, which makes images look a bit sterile. In such cases, though, it’s easy enough to switch to a preset. With the same sensor and processor as the D500, the D7500 can record 4K video, giving impressively detailed footage. However, because it’s captured from a 3840x2160pixel area at the centre of the sensor, it imposes a 1.5x field- ofview crop. This can be an advantage if you’re trying to record distant action – sports or wildlife, perhaps – but it’s more problematic if you want to shoot a wideangle view.
It’s also possible to record full HD video with no crop, although the quality of the footage isn’t anywhere near as good, and you’d get better results downsampling 4K. That said, it’s not obviously much worse than that of other DSLRs, and fine if you just want to record the occasional video.
One key new feature is the addition of built-in electronic image stabilisation for full HD video, which appears to be a similar system to the one Canon has recently introduced in its EOS cameras. It does a pretty good job of reducing the visibility of camera shake while shooting video handheld, even when you’re using an unstabilised lens, but it’s not as effective as the in-body systems found in some competitors.
Nikon has included a Flat Picture Control mode that’s specifically designed to allow easy colour grading of your footage in post-production, and a zebrapattern display to help you avoid clipping highlight detail. You can use the touchscreen to autofocus on a new subject during recording, but this is slow and shows a distinct contrast- detection ‘wobble’ effect in your footage, which means it’s not very usable in practice. Sadly, there’s no peaking display to help with manual focusing, either. These deficiencies leave the D7500 rather lacking in comparison to cameras like the Canon EOS 80D or Sony Alpha 6500, so if you’re specifically looking for a camera that’s good for video, the D7500 may not be the best choice.