D7500 in 2023?

I have D5500 which I love and a bunch of lenses: af-p 18-140, af-p 18-55, af-p 10-20, 35mm 1.8G and Sigma 150-600 contemporary.
My photography is more or less evenly divided between travel, wildlife (birding mostly) and landscape. Being a not very advanced amateur I am reluctant to spend too much money for my hobby, but may be my camera is limiting me too much?
I feel that while as a travel camera my beloved D5500 is more than satisfying, for wildlife and more serious landscape photography it is not good enough.
I do not currently have enough budget to go mirrorless, so may be I just should upgrade to D7500? It seems to be a big step towards a better autofocus, 8 fps, much bigger buffer and at least my wildlife photography would be improved. I won't need to spend money for glass immediately, just for a better body.
On the other hand I can wait until a decent mirrorless system fits my pocket instead of buying an outdated body now.
So what is a more clever way in the long run: upgrade a body and start improving immediately or wait for a budget for a better system and improve my skills in the meantime?
BTW, in my country a new D7500 is $1000, and a Z7II with 24-70 F4 is $3900.

Go with the D7500. You can use all your lenses and it will take great pictures. Better DX for birds than FX IMHO.

D7500 would be good for what you mention, but a D500 (also APS-C) would be better especially for bird/wildlife.

Yes, D500 is a great camera for birding, but i ruled it out for being too big, heavy and expensive. It seems to be too professional for my limited skills )

Isn't it too outdated? Pros like Steve Perry clearly say that it's time to go mirrorless. While the more modern camera takes care of autofocus, you can deal with composition etc. That's why I am afraid that it may be too late to upgrade to another DSLR.

Just because someone online says it's time to change to MILC, doesn't mean you have to or even should. New tech in cameras doesn't make an older camera worse, it's still the same camera, it only makes the newer camera better (not always). That said, do MILC offer better features than many DSLRs? Yes, but not always.

On that note, you may want to watch this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu-SgzQu9KU

If you buy a used D7500 today, you can still spend many many years taking beyond excellent photos. No, it does not offer the eye detection so you can take photos of birds more easily, but it will still work just fine. Here are some photos on Flickr that were taken with a D7500: www.flickr.com/cameras/nikon/d7500/

At the same time, maybe take a look at what other photographers can do with a D5500, some rather impressive stuff: www.flickr.com/cameras/nikon/d5500/

So maybe you do not need to upgrade ?

It sounds like your uses are similar to mine. I chanced a used D7500 and absolutely love it. My former D7200 got damaged (my fault) beyond repair so lenses and operation are good. The LCD touch and articulate is excellent. I do have a competent mirrorless system but prefer the D7500. I originally tried a D5500 but found it hard to hold onto with the bigger lenses but the quality it produced was excellent.

Thank you for your answer. Very good video!
And yes, that's what I ask myself: do I really need a new camera or that's just GAS?
Essentially what I want is to have more keeper rate with less effort and frustration and in that sense the gear matters. I am familiar with photography since film era sitting in darkroom for hours, and I do like the advantages that the technology brings. So why not to use a better and more competent gear and get more fun and motivation rather than struggle with poor autofocus etc?
On the other hand the new gear is very expensive so I need to decide whether to make a modest investment now (say D7500) or to wait and make a big step with upgrading radically to a much better system later.

Nice shot!
Do you prefer D7500 for wildlife only or for all uses? I thought that for landscape full frame is better - except for the more shallow focus depth.
BTW, yes, having a big 150-600 lens on a small camera is not convenient, one of the reasons I would like to upgrade

I don't have any experience with modern FF. My mirrorless is also DX so very similar is image quality. To be completely honest, GAS or wanting an articulating LCD on a D7200 size camera is what lead to my mirrorless "adventure". A very expensive mistake! It has many "bells and whistles" that I just don't need and just tends to be too complicated, for me. (I'm old) The D7500 eight fps. and large buffer fits my uses perfectly.
I guess landscape is usually a second thought in the process of wildlife. I did a shot at Crater Lake National Park with the D7200, not far from home, that FF would have been a plus.

I wrestled with the same issue a few years ago. I had a D5600 that I really enjoyed but I was getting more and more into shooting wildlife including birds in flight (BIF). I was able to get a refurbished, low shutter count, D7500 at a good price. I also added a full frame Sigma 100-400mm Contemporary to the DX lenses I already had. The D7500's improved auto focus and higher burst rate (8 fps) made a difference. These days, I'm all in on Nikon APS-C cameras. In fact, I've added a used D500 to my gear.

I should note that I also have a mirrorless DX, the Nikon Z50. I got it with the two Z DX kit lenses and it takes excellent photos. My experience with it is that, while it's capable of shooting BIFs, my keeper rate can't match that of either my D7500 or D500. The Z50's burst rate is ok but its AF isn't as good.

Finally, other than the Z50, all of my camera bodies and almost all of my lenses were bought as refurbished or used items. Do a bit of bargain hunting and get a D7500.

Regarding landscape photography, can you elaborate on what is not good enough? Specifically, how do you think a D7500 would help? For that matter, how would you say a mirrorless camera would help you?

Okay, a better AF system helps some with tracking and acquisition, but a lens upgrade probably goes farther to improving those issues. Indeed, I would not be surprised if you continued to be frustrated by getting missed shots with the D7500, whereas I bet you would see a noticeable improvement upgrading your Sigma Contemporary lens to a Sport version.

As for the faster fps and larger buffer, those things are definitely nice to have and the D7500 has those along with a better viewfinder, so I would recommend it.

Mirrorless cameras are still improving too, so waiting for the next best thing doesn't stop because you buy into a mirrorless system. Indeed, some really big advances still haven't worked themselves down from the most expensive mirrorless cameras to the mid-level offerings yet, so you should strongly consider waiting another year or so before going that route. In the meantime, the photo you can make today has an intrinsic value over the photo you missed because you were waiting for better gear than what you can afford now.

Here is a photo from 2021 using my D500 and Tamron 150-600mm f5-5.6 VC G2:

Here's another one from 2021 using my Tokina AT-X Pro 14-20mm f/2:

This one needs to be opened in its own tab to be "properly" seen.

Gever, it looks like you own some pretty capable gear that will give you great images for years and will definitely allow your skills to improve. Great question by the way. Certainly the D7500 is a very good body for wildlife, landscape and general photography. If I wasn’t primarily an FX shooter, I’d invest more in DX glass and would be perfectly happy with my D500. I mainly photograph wildlife and scenics.

I don’t know much about the Nikon Z50, but it preforms well and feels like it is well built (a friend of mine owns one). For me the best advantage of Mirrorless is its compactness and lighter weight. I use a Sony RX10iv for this reason, but I prefer the larger sensor for low light and optical finder for wildlife.

Although dSLR DX has been replaced, there are still excellent DX lenses available and of course FX glass offers a great options. It was mentioned earlier that the Sigma Sport super zoom would be an excellent upgrade.

Archie

You raise some excellent points Tony and your images are excellent.

Tony,
Thank you for the detailed answer. And your images are really stunning!! Hope to get close to that level of photography skills one day.
Regarding your questions:
- Yes, i don't think that D7500 is much better for landscape than D5500, at least sensor-wise. To improve landscape I think of Z7 II and 24-70 f4. But this is not within my budget currently.
- Regarding wildlife my primary problem at the moment is poor AF of D5500. I got some very nice and sharp enough images using Sigma 150-600 C but they all are of stationary birds. The AF of D5500+Sigma combination does not cope with BIF. That is why I think that my first priority should be to upgrade the camera, and then I will see what may be the next step.
So based on your recommendation I think to upgrade to D7500 as my first step.
By the way, in my country I can find a used D500 with decent price, while used D7500s cost almost like new. I read that D500 is hugely better for wildlife and sport even than D7500. But on the other hand D7500 can be a general purpose camera, while D500 is too big and heavy to use it for anything else. What do you think based on your D500 experience?

Archie,
Thanks for your answer. Z50 may be a nice camera, but for travel I have D5500 and it is pretty good for me.
And for wildlife I am afraid that Z50 would make same unbalanced combo with 150-600 lens like my current D5500+150-600 combo.
You mentioned that you have D500. Do you use it for wildlife only or for other types of photography?

Thank you! Do you feel a lot of advantage of D500 over D7500? Is is manageable enough for anything other than wildlife?

You're welcome.

Thanks. I'm certain with practice, patience, and perseverance you will get to where you want to be.

What do you think the Z7 and 24-70/4 will do that you can't do now? I just now read Thom Hogan's review of your 10-20mm lens, and what stood out to me was where Thom wrote, "I was reminded of my late mentor, Galen Rowell, as I used this lens. I'm pretty sure that a D3500 and a 10-20mm AF-P lens would appeal to his 'go anywhere' adventuring style. The two form a highly competent image quality capability in a very small/light package."

My experience with my D800 and Sony A850 before that has been that getting good corners is harder on the larger format. I have and use a tripod, and I consider that to be the most important piece of gear for good landscape (and macro) photography; but I often get excellent results handheld with my D500 and Tokina AT-X Pro 14-20mm f/2, and that's something I have almost never been able to do with FX/"FF" cameras and lenses.

Dynamic range just isn't much of an issue these days. I remember dealing with that issue with my D300 some, but even then it was manageable. Even now it comes up infrequently with my D800, but I get around that by taking two shots about two stops apart, one for the highlights and one for the shadows, and then blending them (often I just take one ETTR shot and do two conversions of it and then blend those for an excellent result). The resolution I get from my D500 is perhaps 95% of what I get from my D800, and adding more megapixels has diminishing returns; OTOH, compared to my D500 I would quantify what my D800 can do in terms of fps, acquisition and tracking of its AF system to be about 75% -- so when push comes to shove I'll take my D500 over my D800 -- YMMV.

I doubt the D500 is "hugely" better than the D7500. If you can get a D500 for less, even if it has a little more use, I wouldn't hesitate to do that. My experience with my D500 and D800, and before those the Sony A850, Nikon D300 and D200, and D70 has been they all feel pretty good with the lenses I've used on them (the D70 doesn't have a way to lock-up the mirror, so I considered that and its 6 MP of potential resolution a dealbreaker for serious landscape work; and the A850 placement of the AF-On button didn't feel comfortable to me, so that made it less enjoyable to use for me). I would say the size and weight of these camera bodies becomes more of an issue if you are carrying more than one of them around, but I will use a shoulder strap to carry my D500 and Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8 VR and carry my D800 with a two pound T/S (tilt-shift) lens attached to my tripod slung over the other shoulder and with a backpack carrying three more T/S lenses in it, and even at 61 y/o I am fine if I don't have to race to get somewhere (sometimes I do end up racing when I want to be somewhere specific before the light goes away).