For little under a decade, the Nikon D90/D7K series has been the jumping point for those who were looking to move into the major leagues.
Or for those looking to move down and still get a DSLR with pro-akin performance at an affordable price.
Today, the price gap between the prosumer D7K series and the semi-pro Nikon D500 is in the order of 50% (USD 600) or more, while the differences in performance and operability are probably only appreciable to those of us who really put a camera through its paces.

With the launch of the D7500, Nikon has changed all that.
The marketing department, with its long-standing track record of navel staring, decided that the D7200 is too good to be true (which it is), too much akin to the D500, and ought to be stripped down.
Remember that, while the D500 is undoubtedly an outstanding camera, the company disappointed many of its fans taking close to 9 years for the D500 to replace the venerable D300, while advancing decidedly with the D7K series.
Thus placing a serious incentive on acquiring one of these, rather than shelling out for more expensive, sometimes handicapped, baby FX models such as the D600.

Although the D500 outshines the D7200 with a more sophisticated AF system (Multi-CAM 20K), inherited from the D5, a better processing engine (Expeed 5 vs. 4), a better buffer, and maybe a slightly more thorough build, the much cheaper camera has little else to envy its bigger sister. 
Least of all its odd double card set-up with one XQD- and one SDHC slot.

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While I give them considerable credit for their thorough camera sensor testing and ranking, those of us who look to DxO Mark to help us decide which lenses are the “best” for our particular cameras have been lead astray for too long, already.
One particular testing item that has always called my attention, but had never bothered to research – until now – was the infamous DxO Mark “Best at” Score, which, without exception, suggests that lenses ought to be shot wide-open for best performance.

Shooting lenses wide open might be interesting in certain situations, but in general does not make much sense, because they are typically at their optical best at around two stops down from their maximum aperture.
It also called my attention that lenses we all know to be average keep picking up DxO score on newer, higher resolution and/or full-frame cameras, while some legendary ones keep getting below average scores, independent of the camera they are “tested” on.

As it turns out, and I quote:
“DxO Mark Score is measured for low-light conditions: 150 lux and 1/60s exposure time. Such conditions correspond to a correctly lit living room (with no daylight).
It is a difficult, but rather typical photographic use case.”

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One of the first things I did upon the arrival of my D7100 was to check if it would properly work with my GPS, because the one thing that I have been missing dearly during my recent travels was the ability to properly geo-locate my shots. Here’s what I have found.

Compatibility and Setup

Unlike the D200, the D7100 does not show the GPS icon of my Promote on the top control panel (fig 1, right), which had me initially worried that it was not compatible.
Fortunately, the rear display does show the GPS icon, either blinking when the device is acquiring the necessary satellites or steady once so-called “lock-on” has been achieved (fig. 2)
Still, this is annoying because you must either push the i or the info button to confirm that the device is properly connected, while it cannot be confirmed at a glance, as it is supposed to.
While Nikon’s own GP-1A will likely work properly, other third party devices may give similar results. Meanwhile, the D600 apparently suffers from the same glitch (if you can call it that).

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With he launch of the Nikon D600 – on September 13, last – the waiting has finally ended for whoever wanted to either “go” full-frame or was looking to upgrade from the, by now, legendary D700.
Legendary, because it was the first more or less affordable full-frame Nikon DSLR to break the Canon low-noise hegemony with stellar high ISO performance.
Legendary also, because Nikon never gave up that lead again. At the time of writing, there are six Nikon cameras in the  DxO Mark top-10, while the D700 is still 16^th, in spite of its respectable age of 50 months.
By now the D800E and D800 top the DxO charts (1 and 2, respectively), closely followed by the D4 (5^th).
On September 18^th, 2012, the D600 snatched up 3^rd place, with an overall score of 94 and a Low Light ISO score only second to category leader D3S (10^th overall).

With the D700 being fazed-out, semi-pros and advanced amateurs are left with two full-frame cameras to choose from in Nikon’s semi-pro price bracket, the D800E and D800 costing $ 3.300 and $ 3.000 respectively, while the D600 will set you back $ 2.100, a 25% premium of $ 400 over the aging D300S APS-C camera.
Yet in the absence of independent tests of the D600, it is interesting to compare it against the D800, to figure out how much more camera $ 900 buys us, and ask ourselves whether or not it is worth spending the roughly 50% extra.

If I could afford to spend the additional cash for the D800E without thinking, I probably would. However, I cannot.
Also, after the D1X, I swore to never ever again spend that kind of cash on a body ever again. And $3.000 plus is a tad too close for comfort to the amount I once swore to never ever spend again.

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59% Of voters on NikonRumors wanted a 16 Mp. camera. Well, good luck to them.
Loosely quoting the late Steve Jobs: if you ask consumers what they want, you'll never get any real work done...
As a consolation, the D700 will stay part of the Nikon line-up – at least for a while – according to a Nikon France executive, so all these disgruntled potential buyers can still get a full-frame Nikon without the "excessive" resolution of the D800, at an agreeable 20% discount.
The D700 sells now for $2.200, down from $2.700, only days ago.

Notwithstanding, in 15,4 Mp. in DX mode the D800 is pretty close to these people's dreams, offers Full HD 1920x1080 30p video and a mayor general work-over at only a slight premium over the late D700.
Without even mentioning the rather exciting option to up resolution by a whopping 70%.
My bet is that, after the grumbling has died down, more people than not will prefer the D800 over its predecessor and end up shooting at 36 Mp. no matter what they say today.
How about that for a free upgrade that's only a button push away?

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On one of those typical gray, Dutch September rainy days we did a little tour of an old-fashioned photo store called Camera Land, located at one of those typical gray, suburban shopping centers; this one in the city of Alkmaar, at about 35 km. from Amsterdam.
Although it is nothing compared to those giant photo stores in the US, it is a pleasure to spend some time there, because the owner is around – which always helps – they are well stocked and the staff is not pushy, very knowledgeable and ready to think along with the customer.

Since I am tall, I have had quite a bit of trouble to find a good mono-pod to fit me, but the store carries the RedGed brand, which takes this aspect into consideration.
So, they had no trouble coming up with three 170 cm. models – two of which carbon fiber and out of budget. I left with the most economical of the three: a RMA-432 4-section one-touch aluminum mono-pod, which has a tube diameter of 32 mm., folds down to 54 cm., supports up to 15 Kg. and weighs only 650 grams (69 Euros).
I also bought another umbrella adapter for off-camera flash, but my best buy by far was also the cheapest:

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I thought it could not get any worse after testing Capture NX2 and View NX1.5 - a while ago - but I was wrong.
NX2 is a major problem, at least from where I am standing. So much so, that I have not been able to thoroughly test it; not on Windows XP Pro x64 SP2 (Intel Core Duo 1.6 Ghz., 1 Tb. RAID 10, 4 Gb. RAM, GeForce 7300 GS/256) nor on a “normal” XP Pro SP3 32-bits system.
Do Nikon beta-test any of their programs at all, or do they just throw us to the lions? Worse yet: do they even care about us entrusting our precious images to their cripple-ware?

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