where there’s smoke there’s fire

First, a quick D5 report from Tokyo by a reader:

Whoever is in Tokyo in the next few days and weeks: the Ginza Nikon showroom has a D5 for trying out. No memory cards are allowed. The slots are sealed and a representative is near by… They have it with the 24-70mm VR lens.

Based on what you can try in a bright showroom, the 102k ISO looks really good. The increased coverage of the viewfinder with AF points is better in person than expected and the AF is faster as the D4s in tracking people walking erratically in the showroom.

From ergonomics and menu perspective pretty much like the D4s, just when I wanted to change the ISO, I was going to the wrong button…

The touchscreen feature was useful when I wanted to scroll through a long sequence of pictures or zoom in. But just looking at the last 2-4 pictures, I would still prefer the scroll button, as I still can leave my hand at the camera as for shooting and just use the thumb for scrolling.

Next is a series of Nikon D5 LCD screen captures of pictures taken from ISO 204,800 to ISO 3,280,000 (I know, it’s just pictures of the screen, but we have nothing better right now):

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I just realized that the last two posts (the D5 and D500 Q&A docs) have been really long and it is difficult to navigate down to the comments area. You can continue the D5/D500 specs discussion under this post where you don’t have to scroll down through 17 pages.

Additional Nikon D5 coverage | Additional Nikon D500 coverage

I will keep this discussion pinned to the top for few more days. Please scroll down for the latest NR posts.

As previously promised, here is the internal Nikon Q&A document that explains in details many of the Nikon D500 camera features and specifications (the D5 version can be found here):
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I got my hands on this 17-page internal (“confidential”) document that explains the Nikon D5 camera features and specifications in great details. Some of the highlights:

• Silent Live-View captures have increased in resolution from 2,5 MP (D4S) to 5 MP and frame rate from 24 to 30 fps (page 3, A7 #3)
• Battery life has increased from 3,020 (D4S) to 3,780 (page 4, A7 #8)
• The D5 can only shoot three minutes of 4K video while the D500 can do the same for 30 minutes (page 4, A11)
• Shutter durability D5: 400,000 / D500: 200,000 (page 5, A11)
• D5 does not support SnapBridge (page 5, A11)
• The XQD version (D5-a) can write data faster than the CF version (D5-b) (page 8, A42)
• Movie color sampling is YCbCr 4:2:2, color depth 8 bit (page 14, A83)
• The next version of Capture NX-D will apparently finally have a retouch brush (page 16, A103)

I also heard that Nikon Europe intends to distribute D5 cameras only with XQD cards (at least at the beginning).

Here are all the 17 pages of D5 goodness (the D500 version can be found here):

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