When Nikon asked me whether I wanted to review the new Nikon D7500, I accepted but on one condition, that a professional photographer and Canon user be the one to test it. The brand readily accepted the challenge, which surprised me but I suppose it demonstrated the faith that Nikon had in the D7500. I approached Dominic Phua and Chloe Cheng of DAYDREAM for the challenge. Initially, they expressed some reservations, concerned that they might not be able to give a proper review due to their unfamiliarity with Nikon’s system. After a bit of cajoling, however, they agreed and took the D7500 to a concert and a nursery at Bollywood Veggies.
Below are the photos they shot with the Nikon D7500 and their thoughts on the camera.
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The xx Concert in Singapore
The xx in Singapore
“Having heard much about the low light capabilities of Nikon cameras in general, we wanted to see how the camera fared in retaining highlights/ preserving shadow detail. The D7500 handled both highlights and shadows pretty well, allowing us to pull back a great amount of detail without an obscene amount of grain/ artefacts. Case in point – the audience in the lower half of the image (see above) was sitting in near complete darkness in my original file. We’re not about to abandon our Canon but damn.”
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Bollywood Veggies
At the nursery
Close-up of a plant
“We were interested to see how the new Nikon D7500 handled greens. From our very limited experience, we had the impression that Nikon images tend to look cooler or slightly more saturated compared to Canon. The stock lens was quite decent when it came to generic macro images, allowing us to get up close to our subjects. The screen had relatively low contrast in the bright sunlight, but that’s a typical issue with most LCD screens anyway. When we reviewed the files straight out of camera (we shot in both RAW & JPG), we found the colour reproduction for both to be quite faithful (for both greens and skin-tone) with none of the cooler tones/ saturation we had imagined, which is a plus in our book.”
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Other Thoughts
“The D7500 was fairly user-friendly and the menu was not as complicated as we had originally imagined. Focusing whilst on Live View was quick and accurate even when tracking moving subjects transitioning from shadow to brighter patches of sunlight and the tilt screen was a blessing when it came down to framing low angle shots as it meant we didn’t have to get down to really awkward positions when we wanted to get some detail of the leaves. The D7500 is a pretty capable entry-level camera with nifty technology and good colour reproduction. And damn, it really can perform well with the lights off, hur hur.”
