Nikon D5 review

“Anything you can do, I can do better.” All aboard the banter bus, yeah?

It might sound like playground smack talk, but it’s also the mantra that’s kept rivals Canon and Nikon neck-and-neck for decades, churning out some properly brilliant cameras in the process.

The D5 is Nikon’s latest, a top-of-the-line, £5k DSLR that’s landing just in time for some of the huge sporting events heading our way this summer.

It’s built to take on Canon’s mighty 1D X MkII, throwing in the incremental upgrades that’ll appeal to pro photographers - or just those of us with an extra £5k kicking about. That’s most of us, right? No? No.

A resolution bump from 16MP in the D4S to 20.8MP for the D5 wasn’t really going to set tongues wagging - Canon’s got the 50MP 5DS, after all.

Instead, it’s the D5’s ISO range that’s been getting camera buffs all excited. After all, bigger numbers here mean better light sensitivity - handy if you're out on a job with no studio lighting.

The native range stretches all the way to 102,400, which is impressive in itself (and two stops up from the D4S), but the real number comes from the expanded setting. The D5 tops out at an incredible 3,280,000 - yes, have a moment to take that number in. More than three million.

Whether it’ll actually produce usable results is another matter, but either way, low-light snappers will appreciate the new 153-point AF system. It’s got 99 of the more sensitive cross-type points, so focusing shouldn’t be a problem.

You’ll be able to rattle off frames at up to 12fps, thanks to the new EXPEED 5 processor, and can take 200 RAW shots before the camera will need to buffer - if you’ve got a XQD card, anyway.

Newcomer to Nikon’s top-level gear? XQD is a super fast card format you won’t find in many other cameras, but opens the door for lightning fast shooting speeds and data transfers. The D5 comes in two flavours: one has dual XQD slots, but the other makes do with good old fashioned Compact Flash. Go for the dual CF card version and you won’t get such speedy shooting, but that might not be a problem if you’re not constantly working in burst mode.

Pro photographers are about as fond of change as they are of Instagram filters. Start radically changing up the design and layout of your top-end gear and they’ll be trading in their lens collection faster than you can say “full-frame sensor”.

It’s hardly a surprise, then, that the D5 has pretty much the same body size, shape and layout as the D4S - good news for upgraders looking to make a smooth transition. And to prevent outright rebellion from the Nikon faithful.

There have been a few minor tweaks, though; ones that make handling even better. The ever-so-slightly reshaped grips are more comfy to hold now, whether you’re holding the boxy D5 vertically or horizontally. All of the important buttons are duplicated on the portrait grip, so you don’t have to work your hands like an octopus just to take a head shot.

Speaking of buttons - there are a lot. You’ve got direct access to pretty much every control you could possibly want, along with two small joysticks for moving the AF point around the screen, but it’ll take a while to get used to the layout - unless you’re already using a D4S. If you’ve leapt up from a phone to this beast, you’re in for a rude awakening.

It might say 153 AF points on the box, but you can only pick between 55 of them - the rest are merely the support act. You’ll have to reframe and refocus if your subject gets itchy feet and starts wandering into the edge of your shot.

At least focusing is fast, even in low light, with sensitivity down to -4EV. That’s a clear, moonlit night, for anyone that doesn’t always have a light meter within arm’s reach. There’s no built-in flash, just a mount for an external one - you weren’t expecting a £5k camera to make do with a weak-sauce integrated flash, were you?

Sports pros will be happy to hear continuous focusing has been given a boost over the D4S too. Combined with 12fps continuous shooting, or 14fps if you lock the SLR mirror up first, you’ve got every chance of catching every step of the 100m final in Rio later this summer.

Just keep in mind Canon’s 1DX MkII tops out at 16fps, so you might miss out on that split-second shot that hits the next morning's newspapers.