Nikon D500 Single Lens LCD Digital Camera

Last updated: January 10, 2022


The Nikon D500 is a cropped sensor digital camera that produces quality images and performs well in low light. Its tilting LCD screen makes it great for capturing images at strange angles, so you won't have to pass up any opportunities while taking photos.

Nikon D500 Single Lens LCD Digital Camera

We looked at the top Digital Cameras and dug through the reviews from some of the most popular review sites. Through this analysis, we've determined the best Digital Camera you should buy.

Product Details

Key Takeaway: A tilting LCD screen makes it easy to capture images at strange angles.

In our analysis of 88 expert reviews, the Nikon Single Lens LCD Digital Camera placed 8th when we looked at the top 16 products in the category. For the full ranking, see below.

From The Manufacturer

The Nikon D500 Digital SLR Camera Body is ready to go wherever your passion leads you, capturing everything with stunning clarity, speed and resolution. From busy, low-light cityscapes to thrilling wildlife scenes and fast action shots, the D500 is the ideal companion to your wanderlust. Marvel at the clarity of its cinematic 4K UHD video. Be amazed at its ruggedness and versatility. And, once you’ve captured your gorgeous photos, admire them on the D500’s high resolution tilt touchscreen display and share them via the built-in SnapBridge (Wi-Fi + Bluetooth) capabilities. No matter what you shoot, you can be sure that the D500 will be up to the task, time and time again.FEATURES: Your favorite travel companion – The sleek and beautiful D500 goes anywhere you go, bringing along stunning resolution and performance. Packing a lot of power into a smaller camera body thanks to its DX sensor means you can take advantage of the smaller and lighter DX lenses in the NIKKOR line, and when you’re travelling, every ounce counts. The best part is, there’s no need to sacrifice image quality to gain portability. The D500 strikes the perfect balance with its 20.9 megapixel CMOS sensor, and is ready to capture the exquisite details, colors, and textures this world has to offer. With the D500 at your side, whether you’re hiking through the lush landscapes of New Zealand or on safari in Africa, it will be ready to go, effortless and unobtrusive.Unleash the full potential of the D500 – Like every Nikon DSLR, the D500 is best paired with legendary NIKKOR lenses which provide unequalled clarity and versatility. The NIKKOR legacy is unmatched–there’s a reason over 95 million have been sold to date. Each lens offers a different view from which to capture your memories. Shooting landscapes or portraiture? The fast AF-S DX NIKKOR 16-80mm f/2.8-4E ED VR could prove to be your best friend. Or, extend your range with the lightweight AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED VR II, ideal for

Expert Reviews


What reviewers liked

The D500 performs well in a wide range of different shooting conditions to produce excellent images. It’s a fantastic all-rounder that an enthusiast who’s not tied to one particular subject type should enjoy using.
Examining images in more detail reveals that low light performance is very good within the native sensitivity range. Images taken at the lower sensitivity settings have lots of detail, achieving excellent scores in our resolution tests. This starts to drop off at ISO6400, but the results at ISO12,800 are still very good, with just a hint of chroma noise in raw files viewed at 100% on screen.
It's fast. Really fast for its price class, with concomitantly fast and accurate autofocus.
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Its strengths are its superlative autofocus combined with the ability to keep shooting at 10 frames per second. There are other APS-C cameras that offer similarly excellent image quality but none that offer the speed, ergonomics and dependability of the D500.
the D500 can record movie clips simultaneously to the memory card and an external recorder, enabling a quick and easy backing-up strategy. Flat picture control, Zebra Stripes, Power Aperture Control, Smooth Exposure and electronic vibration reduction are also available for movie recordings.
The D500 has also seen an increase in viewfinder magnification from 0.94x on the D300S to a full 1.0x on the D500. If you prefer to use live view, you'll be happy to know that Nikon has given the D500 a new tilting 3.2" RGBW LCD touchscreen with approximately 2,359k dots.
Probably the headline feature of the Nikon D500, other than its very existence, is the brand new Advanced Multi-CAM 20K auto-focus module which is touted by Nikon as “a new era of auto-focus”. This is certainly not just an incremental improvement on the previous generation. With great strides being made elsewhere in on-sensor auto-focus capabilities, it seems Nikon engineers decided to show us there are still gains to be made with traditional off-sensor phase-detection focusing. The new AF system will go some way to maintaining the performance gap between DSLRs and mirrorless cameras.
As the screen tilts, it's also very useful for photographing from awkward angles - and while a fully articulating screen would be even more useful, it's still great to see on a high-end camera such as this.

What reviewers didn't like

It's worth noting at this point that settings can't be selected, nor the menu navigated, using the screen's touch control.
The camera's only real weakness is its wireless operation. Snapbridge is Nikon's branding for its wireless file transfer system, but I think the company spent more time and money on the branding than it did on the implementation. Though the D500 adds Bluetooth for a persistent, low-power wireless connection, the app isn't even robust enough for consumers much less the advanced users of this camera.
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The 4K footage looks pretty good, even if it isn't quite up there with the best of its contemporaries, but a 2.25x crop, relative to full frame, limits the available options if you want to shoot particularly wide-angle.
Long exposures at night were detailed and colour-accurate, right up to ISO 25600, after which softening and noise became progressively more noticeable. Colour saturation declined at ISO 51200 and granularity was obvious. Shots taken with the Hi1 setting would be usable at small output sizes but by Hi3 the image was very soft and flat looking. The Hi5 setting the image was seriously noise-affected and effectively unusable.
In pursuit of further durability, the D500 doesn't include a built-in pop-up flash, is made of magnesium alloy for the top and rear of the camera, and is reinforced with lightweight carbon fiber on the front.
Focus is very snappy. Soon I noticed a small problem. It may actually be a little too sensitive and jumpy.
While it's true that the Nikon D500 isn't the cheapest APS-C DSLR you can buy, it offers an incredibly diverse array of features which should suit many different types of photographers.
View our Digital Camera buying guide for in-depth advice and recommendations.

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