D7500 - Nikon gives and Nikon takes

[Øivind Tøien]

I wonder if D7500 is made with a magnesium alloy in rear part of the body any longer? There is no mention of that on Nikon's site, only carbon fiber composite. Similar text for the D750 mentions magnesium rear and carbon fiber composite front.

Dealing with cameras in very cold conditions, I do not necessarily think that would be a bad thing if the construction otherwise is sturdy. The metal bodies tend to draw heat from one's fingers very quickly... The weakest point where plastic can cause problems is the attachment of the mount to the mirror box, which anyway is carbon fiber composite or other plastic material on all but D800 and single digit series. The modified strap attachment could be a consequence of the need for a different design than the traditional lugs due to use of carbon fiber composite. D80/90 also had somewhat similar strap lugs.

D750:
"Another first for a Nikon full-frame DSLR, the D750 employs a compact, lightweight and slim monocoque body design. The front body and front cover are constructed from carbon-fiber reinforced thermoplastics, while the rear and top covers are magnesium alloy, for a balanced combination of nimbleness and ruggedness. This slim styling and ergonomic layout allows for ample grip space and comfortable handling."

D7500:

[Akira]

I've been using D750 about 14 months and haven't have any negative impression about the composite matarial compared to the magnesium alloy part of the cover.  The monocoque body feels noticeably more solid than D7000 or D610 whose outer shell squeaked when I squeezed the grip.

Aside from the concern about the "bite" of the screws that fix the mount in place, I don't see any necessity to be particular about the magnesium alloy aside from the electro-magnatic shielding function.

[Ilkka Nissilä]

Well, Nikon cannot make money (remember, their profit was in the negative last year) by competing with second hand manual focus lenses that sell for a fraction of the cost that they cost new (inflation corrected). To have this support of old lenses in new cameras, there is an additional cost (due to the components required) and for each camera body that is not at the very high end, Nikon must ask the question: which features the users of this particular body want to use their money on? In this case Nikon increased the buffer size, fps rate, processing speed, provided the additional motor to control aperture during live view and video, added the high resolution matrix meter to facilitate subject recognition and autofocus, etc. Quite a lot of things that didn't exist in the D7200 were included in the D7500. I think most users of manual focus lenses prefer FX for the larger viewfinder. There are of course exceptions such as macro or astrophotography, where one might prefer to use manual focus lenses but in the former case, the Ai coupling is not necessary, and in the latter case, metering isn't really useful, so for either of these applications the D7500 would seem to work even with manual focus.

[Ilkka Nissilä]

Wow, the flicker reduction feature for still images is included, so the camera will adjust timing of shots subtly to synchronize with the 100Hz (or 120Hz) flickering of artificial lights so the exposure is made at the peak moment of the lighting intensity.  The anti flicker feature should not only reduce noise but improve colour consistency across shots.

[David H. Hartman]

The D7500 looks to me like a very well thought out camera. It probably has the features needed by its target buyers. Maybe the rest of us should not expect a camera with all the features of a D500 for $500.00 to $700.00 (USD) less than a D500.

I hope Nikon sells a lot of these. I think Nikon should.

Dave

To help Nikon next time you see someone taking a picture with a cell phone camera you might politely tell them that should be taking that picture with a Nikon D7500. You'd be doing them a great favor.

[arthurking83]

I'm just wondering if the reason for the D7500 being moved down the product features totem pole, that this could be a way for them to amalgamate the D5xxx and D3xxx line, or simply remove one of them entirely?

[FGAng]

If we go back to earlier DSLR history, with D50, D70, D100, D1 in the line, non-CPU support only existed in D1.  I had the D70 and that caused me to sell some of my Ai lenses as I thought there would not be support for Ai lenses within my price range.  Then support came back in D200, and D300, so Nikon gave thoughts to professional and semi-professionals on backward compatibility.  I think the non-CPU was added to D7000 because Nikon had decided then that the D300 series would not be continued, perhaps it was eating into D3 sales.  I see the present move as affirming that the D500 and its successors will be made available and that DX compatibility with non-CPU will start at D500.  So there is a real danger, that the D610 successor will not have this feature.  Likely D750 successor might, or only the professional and semi-professional bodies would have, Df successor would be the exception.

[Hugh_3170]

If I and others on this thread are reading the D7500 specifications correctly, it does in fact provide some limited metering support for non-cpu lenses  -  just spot and basic centre weighted metering support in Manual exposure mode only.

What I am saying here is that Nikon has not completely left users of non-cpu lenses in the lurch in terms of metering with the D7500 .

It also provides me with a very tantalising question:  could Nikon offer such non-cpu support for cameras such as the present D3xxx and D5xxx families via a firmware upgrade? 

I realise that I am just day dreaming, but I have never been able to figure out why such basic metering support could not have been provided for camera bodies without the aperture follower tab.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

... It also provides me with a very tantalising question:  could Nikon offer such non-cpu support for cameras such as the present D3xxx and D5xxx families via a firmware upgrade? 

I realise that I am just day dreaming, but I have never been able to figure out why such basic metering support could not have been provided for camera bodies without the aperture follower tab.

The issue here is the Nikon thinking on this question not the hardware per se. Or, to be entirely correct, the way the camera influences the actual aperture through the aperture control lever.

In Nikon's universe, any stop down metering is confined to situations in which there is no lens - camera linkage.

[simsurace]

The aperture follower is only needed for controlling the aperture via aperture ring. The camera could still control the aperture with the lens aperture ring set to the smallest setting, at least for AU-s lenses. But those older DX cameras that did not have a follower also did not allow any metering. The non-CPU menu and metering functionality does not require an aperture follower, at least in principle.

[Hugh_3170]

It will indeed be interesting to see how Nikon have implemented the non-cpu lens metering in the new D7500 - whether for example it is done along the lines of what is provided on the Df (when its aperture follower tab is folded away) or whether it is implemented using some other approach or paradigm.  I guess that we will find out one way or another once either the camera or its user manual becomes available.

The issue here is the Nikon thinking on this question not the hardware per se. Or, to be entirely correct, the way the camera influences the actual aperture through the aperture control lever.

In Nikon's universe, any stop down metering is confined to situations in which there is no lens - camera linkage.

[Daniel Bliss]

Feels like it's been designed by a committee at war with itself.  The AI removal simply doesn't make much sense to me.  Why would Nikon toss away a key advantage?  The one card thing, worse.  The consumer-grade strap eyelets, ugh.  And then the huge buffer and the general system-wide speed-up.  And yet no UHS-II card support to support that speed-up.  Go figure. 

[Ilkka Nissilä]

From what I've read, the aperture readout seems to be quite a complicated part and easily broken with even the slightest impact (this happened to my D700; the mechanical readout stopped working).  I am sure having it results in tangible costs and takes some space inside the camera. And most likely if you are buying this camera for action (8fps, buffer, the very nice group area AF), you're better off using AF lenses for such subjects. The market for the D610 is different and old fast primes are relatively for use with that camera (originally intended angle of view, larger viewfinder).

From the user's point of view the fact that this camera achieves a 50-image burst depth (14 bit lossless nef) with UHS-I cards is a good thing as those UHS-II cards are quite expensive and making users upgrade to UHS-II cards to gain acceptable burst performance could easily result in hundreds of Euros of additional cost. Yet SD UHS-II cards seem to share the fragile housing and tiny size of UHS-I while costing as much as the robust XQD cards. Several of my SD cards have stopped working far before their time and I would not want to pay a lot of money for any SD card. I think Nikon should go with dual XQD card slots in high end models and UHS-I is fine for consumer priced models since the cost differential between the I and II cards is so large. I think it is great that the D7500 achieves 50 image burst with existing, affordable cards. With the D500, if one wants to dual write and get maximum performance, one may end up buying two sets of expensive cards and two new readers. I can understand the use of mixed cards in a transition phase but XQD is fully mature and in my view, better value than UHS-II.

[David Franks]

Have to admit that I'm very confused by this release. The title of this thread says it all.

[Peter Forsell]

I think the feature mix of D7500 means two things. First, there will be a D500 successor. Second, there will not be a D5700 successor.

Back in the day the D70/D80/D90 did not have the AI-indexing tab. It was added to the D7000 when Nikon didn't think the D300 series would continue. So, at that time the D7000 was the top DX model. Now that The D500 is the top dog and has the AI-tab, they decided to remove it from the lower model again. This means that there will be another top DX in the future, D510 ?

Since the feature set of the D7500 is so close to the D5600, I think the 5000 series is dead. No grip, no AI-tab, no second card slot but tilt screen added. Sure, Nikon could name the next 3000-series camera D5700 but I doubt it.

So the Nikon camera lineup is now D5, D810, D750, D500, D7500 and D3400. Three FX and three DX. All the other models are discontinued, but unfortunately for Nikon, thousands upon thousands of them lie in warehouses unsold. I think the Df is also discontinued long ago.

Nikon manufactures cameras in batches and we can be assured they will not re-tool their assembly lines to make another run of D7100 or D7200 or D3200 despite those being still present in price lists. Nikon has way too many of those, no need to make a single one more. This can easily be evidenced by the current financial turmoil in Nikon.