The Brad Hill report sounds very promising
Just suffering from the reported reduced burst length ;-)
I think the maximum burst depth is likely not a problem in any practical situation with these cameras.
Two inconsistencies I found:
He is praising the "Recall Shooting function" (which sounds fine indeed) giving the example switching from macro work crawling on the ground and switching by one button to shoot the red-tailed hawk. He probably would have to switch lens too in this case.
Well, lenses like 300/4 and 180-400 have pretty high maximum reproduction ratio so they could be used for close-ups and also for birds in flight. I think he is just trying to make a point that recall shooting functions allows easy change of exposure settings and other parameters. It's a blog post, not a book, and so the examples may not be always the most thought-out, rather just ideas that come to the writer's mind while writing.
He is reporting the ability to customize AF-ON function to the horizontal subselector to do AF-ON and AF-Field selection without having to switch between AF-ON and multi selector as if that was new. Don't know about the D5 but I can do that with my D4S already.
This is also possible in the D5. Many people make small mistakes about technical details, this includes Nikon's own video interviews as well. E.g. in one interview the interviewee claimed that the user interface has been similar since F4. In reality the F4 has a very different interface, and he should have used the F5 as example. The internet lends itself to informal writing and comments where the facts may not always be exactly correct. That doesn't mean the general ideas aren't generally correct. When writing a more formal article, brochure or book, people write, read, comment, and rewrite the text until it is close to perfect. That's not the case in the world of youtube and blogging.
I would not see a TC index in the viewfinder as crucial if I owned the 180-400
I can understand why this would be useful. The lens can be used to reach certain focal lengths in two different ways (with and without TC), e.g. 300mm and 400mm settings may be set with the TC in play yet a higher-quality image can be obtained by taking the TC out of the optical path and zooming in to the required focal length. The TC indicator in the viewfinder reminds the user that they have the TC in, so that they are not shooting unintentionally at a suboptimal setting on the lens. I doubt there will be other lenses with built-in TCs, what would be the point? It makes the lens heavier and more expensive and yet doesn't give the optical quality of a native lens of long focal lengths, e.g. in Brad's own comparisons, it is clear the 500 PF is much sharper at 500mm, f/5.6 than the 180-400 with TC in play at 500mm focal length, yet costs and weights a fraction of the zoom. The 180-400 a specialty lens for situations where you must be able to make quick changes in focal length. I am very impressed with the 180-400's output; in Nikon Owner magazine there was an article on the lens by Moose Peterson and the quality of the images in print was really high. I am not trying to suggest the lens is not useful, but I still don't think it makes sense to add built-in TCs to other lenses. Frequent TC users may disagree, of course, perhaps they see something I don't. I can't really bring myself to like any TC images that I've made, the more time passes the more clear and disturbing the fuzzy veil on them becomes in my eyes. I still want the 180-400 but not because of the TC. I'd really like Nikon to make a version of the lens without the TC, at reduced cost and weight.
This lens is indeed overpriced, but even more so is the new 120-300/2,8
Well, I don't disagree with you, but this seems to be the direction things are going. 10k€ seems to be the new 5k€. I fear inflation may accelerate due to the economic effects of the coronavirus crisis.
Hopefully the new AF-system will be cloned in the future as it was in the past. I would like to see a D500 successor with this System
I am reasonably confident it will be seen in the D850's successor at the very least.
I would think there is going to be a D7 as there is nothing in the mirrorless segment on the professional telephoto side from Nikon and I suspect the transition to mirrorless in the sports photography and photojournalism segment will take the retiring of the current generation of photographers.