With Nikon just having introduced two new cameras to their lineup it is a good moment to describe my experience with the immediate predecessor of the D500.

In 2009 my Nikon D70 began to behave oddly. Most pictures were overexposed and the camera would lock-up. Luckily it was a known issue and Nikon repaired the camera free of charge. Up until then I had been using the D70 for pictures and a Sony MV890 camcorder for video. The quality of both were great for their time.

That same year, Nikon introduced the D300s, and with a trip to Bhutan looming, I knew this camera would make a perfect upgrade.With my experience with dust on the sensor in both India and Africa, I decided to get the new Nikkor 18-200mm VR II lens (27-300mm when compared with film). This way I had enough reach without having to take the lens off and expose the inside to dust.

The new camera had a couple of new options. It was capable of shooting HD (720p, 24fps) video. The built-in microphone is horrible, but since I was mostly interested in the images, this was never a problem.

The pictures were huge (12MP, 14 bit RAW images) at 15MB each.

A good thing that this camera takes two memory cards at once, a compact flash card and an SD card. Usually I have one 32GB Sandisk compact flash card and one 32GB Eyefi Mobi Pro SD card in the camera. Both set to record the photos, and the Eyefi card also recording the videos. The wireless capability of the Eyefi card allows me to constantly copy the pictures (and videos) to my tablet or phone for a backup in the cloud and for directly sharing pictures on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  

With 14-bit RAW files, this camera had no problem in capturing the vibrant colours of Bhutan.

Although the Nikon D500 surpasses this camera at every turn (20MP 4k video), I see no need to upgrade.