D500 vs D750 Indoor Soccer Shootout

[astroNikon]

So today I put my D750 and D500 against each other on indoor soccer. Our U14 team is an exceptionally talented team and very fast on the field, we’ve won the indoor soccer challenges for the last several years. I think they currently have 29 straight wins.

Indoor soccer is especially challenging for photography. We’re in a large white bubble with scattered canister lights pointed up the walls as primary lighting. ISO on a D600 varies from 640 to 6400 (on a bright day outside) dependent upon which direction you are shooting, time of day as the outside light may aid in lighting. The field is about 50 yards long so positioning is important as the more you crop, the more ISO noise you get from the not just low light, but poor quality light. I find sitting in the middle of the field very advantageous as the image is optimized for minimal cropping on a FullFrame camera. The more cropping you do at high ISOs the more grainy the image. So positioning is important when you are pumping out high ISO shots.

My Nikon 80-200/2.8 AF-D lens is a lens that I have been using for years starting with my D7000 and later D600. They are relatively inexpensive and that low cost (with most of my other lenses) allow me to afford better bodies.

Each aspect of shooting allows the photographer confidence in getting the shot. So other than rehashing specs on paper I’ll review how it was photographing the action for the situation.

 

[astroNikon]

Feel in the hands.
I have had the d500 for several weeks now, the d750 for about 6 months. I can definitely tell the difference between these two bodies while shooting. But not necessarily in that one feels more “solid” than the other. If I’m just comparing the feel while not shooting you can feel a difference, but while shooting I didn’t really feel a difference but it was obvious from the button layout, visual crop through the viewfinder, etc.

I’ve given myself several weeks of testing on the d500 and I’m comfortable with the layout, etc. Thus in the “feel in the hands” there really is no advantage. I set ISO to AUTO ISO so I’m not pressing that button at all. The D500 has the button defaulted to the top right, and the D750 is bottom left though my record button (top right) is reprogrammed for ISO, thus about the same position. I have oddly found need for ISO on the lower left too, having it in two location could be considered an advantage.

Advantage: personal preference.


AutoFocus
I use an 80-200/2.8 AF-D lens, which is an older design Nikon lens. It requires an in-body focus motor. Modern D3x00, D5x00 series cameras cannot AF with this lens and you need to have a more modern 70-200/2.8 AF-S lens. Only d7x00, d3x0, d500 and the FX models can Af with this lens. Oddly, even though the lens was designed and initially built a long time ago, Nikon still sells these as new on their website for $1,225.

The D750’s autofocus is familiar to me. On the D7000 the autofocus would sometimes hunt before getting on the image. This requires the shooter to keep the focus throws to a minimal and rerelease the AF system as the action moves around. This is the same on the D600. This lens is quite good when you “reset” the AF and not keep your finger down on the button pushing the AF-C system. With the D750 the AF-C system was much faster than the D7000/D600 and hunting was far less but I would keep the focus throws to a minimum and reset the AF-C system. I also use the AE-L/AF-L a lot when you have crossing players in front of the subject.

With the D500. What? The AF system drives this lens insanely fast. Who needs AF-S lenses. hunting? Not once. I spent a little time moving to different players at different distances and the AF system/body motor drive drove this lens nearly instantly.

I have the D500 set to accept crossing objects in front of the subject so that I didn’t need to use the AE-L/AF-L button, which isn’t identified but it’s the little sub-selector which you can use for focus point (the same as the selector pad). If you press it in it’s your AE-L/AF-L button. I didn’t have to use this button the entire time I shot with it. Though I should have in reviewing some images.

In looking over the photos I see that the D500 preferred a standing object versus where the single focus point was, beyond the object while I was panning keeping up with the movement. I’ll have to investigate this more later.

Advantage: D500

 

[astroNikon]

Shutter Mechanism
I bring this up because it can affect the photographers feel for the camera. The D750 shutter mechanism is quick and it supports 6.5fps. Compared to the D500 though the D750 shutter mechanism is slow and clunky. It makes you wonder if it’s a little loose.

The D500 shutter is super fast and crisp. The same sound and speed whether you are doing 1fps or 10fps. I used cL at 6fps for shooting.

Advantage: D500

 

[astroNikon]

Image size capture
This is an interesting situation. The D750 is a FX camera. The D500 is a DX camera with 1.5x crop. With this field I positioned myself in two locations. One in the middle of the field and getting action going back and forth. This can limit your view of the field but the maximum distance to any side is half of the other’s long distance. This has proven itself useful in minimizing noise in more heavily cropped full field shots. I then positioned myself back towards the side of the keeper/goalie for a larger view, though longer of the field.

Because I’m in the “open” side of the field I have to caution on safety and any time the play/ball comes my way I put the camera down, so no close up action shots. On the spectator side it’s covered by glass and nets.

I normally have to give a good liberal amount of crop to the FX when the play is at the other end of the field. On the D500 of course I won’t need to crop as much. Advantage maybe?

On closer side of the field there are times the D500 simply was too close, but was ample enough distance for the D750. If you are getting more up close action shots the FX definitely has the advantage. The D500 FOV crop the disadvantage.

When Lightroom was loading the images I knew which ones were D500 and which were D750 immediately. Any shots when the players were on this side of the field the image was closer, and times I took waist up shots because of the crop.

Advantage: Personal Preference.
Outdoor soccer on a full field though, the D500 would have the obvious advantage.

 

[astroNikon]

Settings
Because this was my first try with the D500 for indoor soccer I shot in RAW with C-Low @ 6fps and Flicker turned Off. It has the buffer to handle it, so no problem. The D750 I shot in Large, Fine JPEG in Vivid mode. Generally shooting in JPEG allows the buffer to keep going like crazy if needed and my shots focus, balance etc are generally really good SOOC anyways. I’ve been using this setup with the D600 too and generally have really good results. FWIW, this is all volunteer shooting. If I was getting paid I’d shot in RAW.


Focus Mode / Metering / ISO control
My AF systems were set to AF-C, and Metering to Spot on both cameras. Spot on a FX and a DX camera though is different. The AF system uses the same “spot” size which on a DX is actually larger by 1.5x than on a FX camera. This actually may cause issues as you are shooting along in the camera setting the ISO.

Settings: f/2.8, 1/1000 Shutter, AUTO ISO
The quality of the light in this indoor field is nothing short of abysmal. This seems to affect the ISO and noise in the image comparatively. In other indoor school gyms with high mounted lights pointed directly down the quality of the light is significantly better allowing much improved ISO balance and image clarity.

ISO Ranges:
D750 ISO from 2,800 to 12,800
D500 ISO from 3,600 to 25,600
D500 at ISO 9000 you start to see some significant noise. Thus I had to bring blacks down though one can still see roughness in image. Oddly in the same Continuous shot I see ISO varying from 9000 to 8000 to 9000 to 8000 to 7200.

I saw an oddity the other day when I had AUTO ISO on taking a pic of the moon and the shot came in at 10,000 ISO and highly grainy. Though I went outside again and took the shot at ISO 400 with the same settings afterwards. At instances it seems as though the ISO control deviates from it’s actual ISO setting somehow in relation to the sensor control.

On some images the d500 shows ISO 4500 when the graininess looks like 11,000?
To get the blacks looking good I had to go to -60 or lower, with the D750 if I did some I would do about -35 max.

With the D500, and closer action I’ve learned more about cropping above the knee. Getting partial shots (better than nothing). So it all depends upon the end result image which may convey a shooting style, or a limitation.

Both cameras allow you to turn it off then back on and nearly instantenously be able to start shooting. The D500 has a slightly quicker (on paper) startup to shoot time and faster push button to shoot times.

These numbers are important because as you get more precise in your shots you don’t have to anticipate the shot happening as much and can wait for the action to present itself more readily. But the speed of the camera focusing the lens also plays an important role in this, and as mentioned before the D500 drove the 80-200 lens a lot faster than the D750. I’ve tested parents D3100, D5300 with my 50/1.4 @ 1.4 and you have to really anticipate the shots and hope you get the action you want in this arena.

FINAL: Image Quality Output
When loading the images in Lightroom I was able to identify which images came from which camera. The final output also was obvious. The D750 had better final images than the D500 which had an advantage of shooting in raw with more leeway to tweak.

But getting to the final output the D500 was very nice to shoot with.

I’m going to bring the D500 again to see if I can improve on my technique and the final image but for this extreme haphazardly lit indoor stadium the D750 beat the D500 in the final image quality.

 

[astroNikon]

two example cropped images from subjects about the same distance apart to show the noise difference. Reset of all settings except for crop.

Both are 1/1000 Shutter, f/2.8, ISO 12,800 at about the same distance. As mentioned the D500's noise at 9,000 and above was quite evident from that point forward and fairly consistent. I put this down to the quality of light as I have been experimenting with it, and this more extreme indoor situation really put out a good test.

Yes, her "6" number is on backwards LOL crazy girls.

 

[goodguy]

Thank you for the review

 

[Derrel]

NICE review of these two machines. I can tell quite a bit of effort went into this post. Thank you for your effort on this!

 

[astroNikon]

Above I mentioned about an oddity with the camera's ISO control in relation to how it works with the sensor.

I took a shot of the moon and I was in Auto ISO. When I loaded it into LR I noticed the heavy grain and 10,000 ISO !!
I went back outside in manual ISO and redid a shot. Much different and more normal. Roughly the same exposure (visually, not mathematically), though the 10,000 ISO one has heavy grain/noise.

One shot at 1/400 shutter, f/8.0, ISO 320 (manual ISO) & -0.1 Exp Comp
the other at 1/200, f/6.3 at 10,000 ISO (auto ISO) 0 exp comp
spot metering I'm pretty sure for both.

 

[MSnowy]

Nice write up. How bout posting some pictures from the game that you would use for an 8x10 print

 

[greybeard]

Thank you

 

[LCGLincle]

two example cropped images from subjects about the same distance apart to show the noise difference. Reset of all settings except for crop.

Both are 1/1000 Shutter, f/2.8, ISO 12,800 at about the same distance. As mentioned the D500's noise at 9,000 and above was quite evident from that point forward and fairly consistent. I put this down to the quality of light as I have been experimenting with it, and this more extreme indoor situation really put out a good test.
View attachment 132849 View attachment 132850
Yes, her "6" number is on backwards LOL crazy girls.

There's so much noise on the 2nd image, which also happens when my ISO is around 6400 on my Canon EOS Rebel T5 camera... Very informative posts and thanks for this one! I wish I had a camera more than ISO 6400 for indoor sports and other not-so-bright places! :/