Very Happy with this Nikon D500 Camera Kit!!
- The kit as assembled by Cameta has everything needed to start taking photos immediately. The heavily padded knapsack easily houses everything and feels like it should last a good long time. It's adjustable and fairly comfortable to wear.
- The Nikon D500 and Nikon 18-300mm lens are a good general winning combo. I've been on a photo-taking frenzy with this setup. The camera and supplied lens are not feather weights, but I have no problem carrying this combo around for 5-6 hours and I'm not the strongest person.
- The auto-focus is superb especially for non-stationary wildlife and the usable photos (sometimes called a keeper rate) is way up in the mid-90th percentile even when doing some 10 frame per second spray blasts. At that speed the mirror does tend to be a factor in the view-finder as it's flipping up and down, but with a little practice it's not a really big deal at all to track your subjects.
- The camera itself feels very solid and well built and I like the placement of the exterior buttons and topside controls. The camera's viewfinder is very clear and bright and I don't need my glasses to use it as I do with my D5300.
- Image quality is excellent in both jpg and raw, and has exceeded some of the other reviews I've read. Although it will accept an SD card, this camera begs to have the other slot filled with a high-speed xqd card. In doing so, the 10 frames per second is attainable for a longer period and the buffer doesn't fill quick as is does with just an SD card.
- The touch screen is clear, really nice, tilts up-and-down, but it does not twirl around so you can use it to take a selfie (like you can with the fully articulating lcd screen on the Nikon D5300).
- There is no built-in flash which is not a problem since the kit comes with an external flash.
- Out of the box, battery life was a little disappointing but with every discharge and charge cycle it's getting much better even with using the touch-screen quite a bit (the on-screen pic review & histogram is useful along with the ability to finger swipe through pics and pinch to zoom in-or-out). When viewing the menus on the touch screen, one must use the paddle button on the back to navigate them - no touch-screen access for those. When taking a pic using the viewfinder, the touch-screen turns off so you can't mess anything up if you're squashing your nose against it.
- The 18-300mm supplied lens is sharp but not exceptional in very low light - if you have a lens that is (such as the 35mm 1.8), this camera will delight you with its low light functionality. The lighted buttons on the backside are from heaven as I do a fair amount of evening/night shots.
- The camera to pc usb cable is sturdy as-is the socket just inside the camera's side access door.
- I've been through the camera's menus and they are easy to navigate (especially upgrading from a D5300). These menus allow for lots of customization which I'm finding very useful (button reassignments, custom banks, etc.)
- Nikon appears to have put alot of thought into this D500, however, the only suggestion I would make to send this to a stellar review, is that the two storage slots each be the same - Ex: 2 SD cards, or 2 XDQ cards, not one of each.
- All-in-all it's a lot of features for the cost. At just over one month of usage, averaging 100-200 photos a day, I have no problem recommending this camera as a great all around performer especially where accurate auto-focus and a higher frame rate are needed. It's really good!!Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New
