The Nikon D7500 Will Meet All Your Photography & Videography Needs

By Adele Chan
“You don’t need to know photography. You just need to know photographers.” — For the last three years, I’ve lived by these words. When I started taking photos, my biggest challenge was getting the camera settings right for each lighting situation — and what I did every time was to call my photographer friends for advice. They did all the settings for me: aperture, ISO, and shutter speed, and they even positioned and configured the studio lights for my various shoots. This was when I was shooting with the Nikon Df — a fully manual full-frame DSLR with absolutely no automatic settings. It was a steep learning curve but very fulfilling — the experience with the Df fast-tracked me into the world of professional photography and I’ve since used it to shoot campaigns and celebrities for NYLON and my beauty book, Editing Beauty.
But the one thing the Df cannot do, is film video. And now that NYLON has gone fully digital, we get requests to shoot videos almost every day. So last month, I got my hands on the new Nikon D7500 to see if it could serve our video (and maybe even photography) needs. I’ve been using it for a month now, and if I’m going to be honest — I can’t live without it. It is by no means a replacement for my Nikon Df, but an excellent companion for it. Let me explain:

AT AN EVENT:
I need my camera settings to adjust quickly, according to the lighting situation, and to have continuous focus based on the guy jumping around and rapping on stage (I’m talking about G-Dragon and Pharrell here). The D7500 has a wonderful thing called Automatic mode… something that every camera has (except the Df), but is a luxury to me considering I’ve been shooting exclusively on the challenging Df for three years now (that was my choice). The D7500 is quick to auto adjust and I don’t have to worry about anything except to frame and shoot my subject. See below… the camera captures various lighting situations beautifully.

[Now all I need is for Pharrell to turn around.]

[Hello, sir! Only Pharrell can pull off Chanel Ready-To-Wear like Pharrell.]

[G-Dragon in concert / Zion T. performing with G-Dragon.]

[G-Dragon with Kingmck, who took this photo off my Instagram and used it on his own without crediting me. Oh the woes of being a photographer…]

INSTANT SHARING:
Once of the best features of the D7500 is its ability to transfer photos immediately and automatically to a smartphone via the Nikon SnapBridge app. I limited each photo to 2MB and turned on “auto transfer”, so it runs in the background and anything I shoot with the camera is almost immediately reflected in the photo album in my phone. I always believe, if the technology is there, use it! I’ve been sharing photos with everyone within seconds of shooting, and everyone has been commenting how efficient I am (it’s not me… it’s the technology). I took these at a recent video shoot for Kat Von D Beauty and shared them immediately with the makeup artists and models.

[Makeup looks created by Kat Von D artists for a NYLON SINGAPORE beauty video.]

TOUCH SCREEN!
Yes this camera has a touch screen that actually works like one! You can swipe, zoom in and out, and even touch to focus. When you’re in “live view mode” (viewing through the screen instead of the view finder), you can touch the screen to focus on that area and to fire off the shutter! It’s really like taking photos with a smartphone… which brings me to my next point.

TEACHING FRIENDS:
The main problem I have being the “photographer in the group”, is… I’m the one taking all the photos, hence I end up not being in any of them! With the D7500, I managed to teach friends, wait staff and strangers how to use the camera (Me: “See this screen? It’s touch screen. Just touch the face to focus and it’ll also take a picture.”) So for the first time in a long time, I have decent photos of myself that are not taken on a mobile phone!

[Here’s me, taken by my friend in the gardens of Chanel Pantin, Paris. If only I could hold still as well…]

[I even taught my 6-year-old how to use the camera! This is the picture she took of me and my two super pigs (Okja!!). And yes, all that shelving is Muji.]

SPECS:
For a camera at this price range, you can’t do much better than what the D7500 offers. It has a 20.9-megapixel CMOS sensor (it’s the same sensor as the much more expensive D500), a super wide ISO range of 100 to 51200, it can shoot at 8fps, it also shoots 4K movies, and for a DSLR, it’s considered light — the camera weighs approximately 720g with battery and memory card but without body cap, and approximately 640g for the camera body only.
Full tech specs found here.

BOTTOM LINE:
I’m not replacing my Nikon Df with this camera. The raw quality of photos I can produce with the Df will have me shooting portraits and fashion campaigns with it for years more (or until Nikon releases an updated version of the Df that looks just as good). But I will be taking the D7500 out with me a lot more now than the Df; to parties and events, to concerts and gatherings. Thanks to its immediate sharing capabilities, the built-in flash, and its ease of use (being touch screen and having auto mode for friends), the D7500 will definitely be replacing my smart phone’s camera as my everyday lens.
Videos filmed with the Nikon D7500 coming up soon on nylon.com.sg.