Greetings from Santa Cruz CA

Just joined the Forums (already made a post in the D500 threads).

Shooting currently with D90, considering upping to D500, and keeping D90 as a back-up

Lots of scenics (from the desert to the sea to a chance at Hawaiian volcanoes...though not the current eruption), and presently doing a number of auto races.

Also another re-welcome. Since you apparently want to do landscapes as well as auto racing, you might want to consider the D7200. While the D500 is a little better for action, the D7200 is quite a bit less expensive and a better all around camera.

hello and welcome

Bikerbrent said:

Also another re-welcome. Since you apparently want to do landscapes as well as auto racing, you might want to consider the D7200. While the D500 is a little better for action, the D7200 is quite a bit less expensive and a better all around camera.

Click to expand...

I've considered that as well. The speed of the D500 is what I'm very interested in, hence a good idea to rent and test I should have it tomorrow, a few days to become familiar with it, then next weekend a full 3 days of racing.

Welcome aboard!

If you get the D500, you will be better off. In almost every way, it is the best crop sensor camera made, ever. Santa Cruz? Lots to take photos of there. When growing up my family had a beach house, the last one right on the water just south of Rio Del Mar, with no other structures all the way to Moss Landing on Monterey Bay so we spent 1/2 of each summer there. That was before the big population increase, Santa Cruz was a small village. For landscape, you will need an ultra-wide angle lens because a crop sensor has a narrower field of view than 35mm film or full-frame digital. I have the D90 also, which was my first digital camera when it came out and to get wide enough fields of view got a Sigma 10-20mm 3.5 ultra wide, mostly because it was the lowest cost. It has been quite good for my needs despite the low cost. Nikon has released a smaller lighter 10-20 lens which has gotten good reviews I would have considered if it was out at that time. Since most of my shooting is people I never upgraded my only wide angle, wider than 24mm. It even works on my D800 for interesting perspectives on people shots. This was taken 48 inches from my GF on the roof of the art center next door to our apartment. It is posted as an illustration of it is possible to get low distortion of people very close up at wide angles contrary to popular advice, The key with wide angle is not introducing distortion from the subject not being perfectly perpendicular to the axis of the lens.

Alternatively, if you use a tripod you can take a series of shots and stitch them together to simulate a wide field of view. That can be done easily in PhotoShop or several other image editing programs. Since light level and speed are not usually important traits of good landscape lenses, where long exposure tripod shots are the norm, max size aperture is seldom used, some of the ultra wide lenses are low priced. Color, micro contrast and how closely you can frame to the sun are important criteria. Modern wide angles are better for these traits due to advances in lens coatings

Howdy and welcome to Nikonites!!!