NIKON D3500
The D3500 is Nikon’s most affordable DSLR. It’s aimed at beginners, but could it be your back-up camera?
What do we make of Nikon’s most affordable DSLR?
Nikon’s D3XXX line of DSLRs have been a great choice for beginners who want to learn more about photography, and who also want to start taking more creative images than they can with a point-and-shoot compact camera or phone. The latest model, the D3500, has an almost identical specification to its predecessor, but it’s a little smaller and lighter. With that in mind, it could be a more portable alternative or second body to a large fullframe SLR like the Nikon D850. So how does it shape up?
Inside the D3500 is an APS-C (DX) format sensor with 24.2 million effective pixels paired with an EXPEED 4 processing engine. That’s a nice combination that offers a good balance between image size and detail resolution, a sensitivity range of ISO 100-25,600 and a maximum shooting rate of 5fps. It should ensure far better images than are possible from the average smartphone.
However, if it’s the convenience of sharing images via a smartphone that encourages you to use your mobile for some photography, you’ll be pleased to learn that the D3500 has Nikon’s SnapBridge technology on board. This can be set up to automatically transfer images (either full-resolution or at 2MP size) from the camera to a paired phone.
SnapBridge has had a chequered history, but we found it works almost flawlessly with the D3500. It means you can shoot with a proper camera and have an image on your phone to share on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter within seconds.
Unlike the D3400, the D3500 can also be controlled remotely via phone using the SnapBridge system. That’s handy when you
need to avoid introducing shake by touching the camera.
The main difference between the D3400 and the D3500 is that the new camera has a monocoque construction. This means there are fewer joints and seals so the camera
“If you can keep the active AF point over the subject, it gets fast-moving objects sharp and keeps them that way”
is a little lighter. If you’re used to a camera like the D5 or D850, the D3500 will feel very lightweight and flimsy in comparison, but doesn’t creak or complain when you squeeze it in your hand. Its thin body also allows for a good deep grip without making the camera
larger overall. It’s not a natural pairing with a large lens like a 70-200mm f2.8, but it’s handy to be able to use existing Nikon
F-mount lenses on it if you have a collection already. We’d advise holding the lens rather than the camera when you mount a heavy optic though.
The Guide Mode is useful if you have any novice photographers in the family, accessed via the Guide setting on the mode dial. It will help beginners learn about photography and how to take control of the camera, with everything clearly explained in simple, nontechie language.
One aspect of the D3500 that is particularly impressive is its 11-point reflex-mode autofocus system. Even with the 18-55mm kit lens in low light, it’s fast and accurate. As there are just 11 AF points, it’s not great at tracking a subject around the frame, but if you can keep the active AF point over the subject, it gets fast-moving objects sharp and keeps them that way. Switch to Live View mode and the contrast-detection AF system is reasonably good with the AF-P kit lens mounted. It’s less impressive with an AF-S lens.
Naturally, Nikon has beginners in mind with the D3500 and its Matrix metering system copes with a wide variety of scenes very well. There were times when we expected it to underexpose a bright scene, but it achieved a well-exposed result. Conversely, it also seems to recognise when we were aiming to shoot a silhouette. A shot of some horses against a sunset, for example, was delivered just as we wanted.
The level of detail is what we’d expect from a 24MP APS-C format sensor from Nikon, and noise is controlled well. RAW images captured
at ISO 6400 have a fine texture of luminance noise visible at 100%, but there’s no banding or clumping and it’s not problematic. Naturally there’s a little more noise visible in shots taken at the ISO 25,600 maximum, but the results are still very good and perfectly usable in many situations. In comparison with the high-ISO RAW files, simultaneously captured JPEGs look a bit smoothed. We prefer the more natural-looking RAW files, which have a little more detail and bite between the edges of image elements.
We found that the D3500’s Auto White Balance system copes with a wide range of lighting. As you’d expect, images shot in artificial light have a slight colour cast, but it’s usually easy to correct – especially with RAW files. It performs very well in natural light but there were a few occasions when we opted to use the sunny or shade setting to capture images with a little more warmth.
Using the Landscape Picture Control adds a little zip to some landscape images, but as its name implies, the Standard setting is a good one to use for most scenes. On the whole, the D3500 produces nice, vibrant-looking images.