On our project, video is a HUGE component of the content we are creating. Being the producer, director, and still shooter, I shoot about 90% stills and 10% video shooting the D5. Brent on the other hand shoots 90% video and 10% stills (but as you can see above, he’s great with stills too!). We have D5s, D500s and D750s in the equipment locker along with a war chest of lenses. Brent being the video guy, I wanted to present you that side of the D500 & D750 as he shoots with them exclusively. Understand he depends on the D500 and that’s his primary body. So here is a working look at both the D500 and D750 in Brent’s words.
Having been fortunate to fly with and film the Texas Flying Legends Museum for six months now, I’ve put a lot of time in on my D750, and now a D500, recording the flights and performances. So I wasn’t really phased when I was sent to Minot, North Dakota to cover a one-and-a-half-day airshow, stills and video, all by myself. Our previous shows were the whole team, with me being responsible for just video, over the course of a few days. I had my trusty bodies, though, and plenty of equipment to make it work.
It is pretty common for photographers to have a couple bodies, makes for easy lens swapping, and with aviation, having two lenses already set up makes for not just speed, but keeping that ever sensitive sensor dust spot free, a big factor with DSLR video I find.
But by the end of the event, I noticed the D750 didn’t work for me the same anymore. The quality was there; all of the video it shot was beautiful. But it was harder, less intuitive. What happened?
The D750 and D500 are a great fit for the work. Both are light, easy to get into places I need to be, and have all those useful video features like the flip LCD. A D5 would be all wrong these days, with the added weight and size making the overall video rig feel unbalanced, heavy, and difficult to keep stable for long periods of hand holding. But why did the D750 no longer feel as good as the D500? Three things really stand out in my mind.
First, considering just video, the D750 options are so limited now compared to what the D500 does. I can shoot 4k, 1080p, 1080p with EVR (Electronic Vibration Reduction), and I can set 1080p to be standard DX or 1.3 on top of that. The FX 24-120 can get all the way out to 270 in 4k. This gives me so many ways I can shoot the same thing completely differently with a single body. Now if I was requiring myself to only shoot 4k, then perhaps I’d feel that limit again. But in the meantime, all of this range allows for a critical component to me, less weight and size while doing more.
Secondly, changing video settings was made to be fast and intuitive on a D500. On the D750, you’ll eventually find your fingers doing some tricky gymnastics in order to change simple things. Much to the bane of the still photographer, the button layout on the D500 is made for video, like having both the Info and i buttons in exactly the right spot, or ISO by the shutter. They’re not hidden on the D750, but compared to the D500 where changing the ISO is the button right on top by the shutter and a flick of the thumb wheel, the D750 is clunky now. Even the simple touch screen auto focus makes things so much simpler. Having to manually move the focus box across the screen, and then focusing, is a lot of time where I’m probably missing shots. Taping right on the spot I need is instant. That D500 LCD is extremely sharp compared to the D750 as well, making visually focusing much more reliable.
Third, and very important if you’re a one-man band for still and video, is how the D500 handles stills. Again, this isn’t a quality comparison at all; the D750 takes beautiful stills. But the D500’s biggest advantage here is just how quick I can change between stills and video. It’s all about finger gymnastics.
When I shoot video, I’m in Manual. When I shoot stills, I’m either in Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority, depending on whether or not a prop is involved. Which means going from video to stills, I have to turn live view off, switch out of manual to the correct mode, and now I’m shooting again, and vice versa to get back to video. Is this vastly more complicated on a D750? Not at all. But for the feel for the D500 works and flows much faster and easier, possibly because I like the D500 Mode button as opposed to the D750 Mode wheel, which others may prefer.
(As an additional bonus, don’t forget the D500 gets 10 fps and never stops, where the D750 does 6.5 and absolutely fills the buffer.)
By the end of that event, I looked through my footage and found I kept more D500 footage than D750. It’s really that simple. I didn’t like a single D750 still I took of the Texas Flying Legends, because they all had issues that resulted from either my finger gymnastics trying to get the D750 set back and forth from video and stills or a full buffer. Those stills are filed in that one special folder for “remember what went wrong here.” So unfortunately I don’t even have a comparison shot to show for stills.
The D500 feels really good. It got me all the footage I needed, without any moments of frustration getting in the way of the shot. Whether still or video or switching between the two, it’s the body I grab to get the job done, no matter the job.