Ah, a whole page of salesman bs! No, you don't need to part with your money.
Here's some good advice: your next upgrade should be mirrorless
The very reasoned and reliable Thom Hogan recently came back from an African Safari. For the first time ever, he took only mirrorless bodies--a Z6 and a Z7. The result?
Translation: "go spend money on something you won't need that doesn't make a difference and is incompatible with what you already have, and comes with its own set of shortcomings"
In his words, "...the trip was insane. Off-the-charts insane...Had the Nikon Z's failed me, I'd be furious right now, because in 25 years of going to Africa I haven't seen such an amazing parade of animals. Instead, I'm perfectly happy. These images speak for themselves.
Translation: "I got some amazing images because I was in the right place at the right time, and the Nikon Zs happened to not fail. But DSLRs are just fine for that too and also don't fail." Basically Thom was surprised mirrorless worked as well as a DSLR would have.
Some of the VERY REAL MIRRORLESS BENEFITS he found:
- The EVF coupled with magnification makes a better-than-spotting scope (or binoculars) scanning device.
- The EVF allowed me to see what I was doing during near pitch black conditions (I shot the mostly nocturnal Hyenas at ISO 25600 successfully, for example; the following shot was almost an hour after sunset).
- The EVF allowed me to see what I was shooting in bright conditions (the rear LCD can wash out in bright sun, and the DSLR viewfinder can wash out shooting into the sun, too).
- The smaller size of the gear I was using allowed me to juggle two complete systems in the front seat of the Land Cruiser where I had very minimal space available (lens choice helped here).
^ valid advantages if you feel like not having those things are holding you back. If you specifically want those things and feel like spending several thousand dollars, go for it.
- 500mm on a Z7 is also 750mm at DX crop on a Z7 (and 20mp), as good as you'd get from a D500.
The D7200 has a slightly higher resolution sensor than the D500 and Z7.
- Complex metering situations, such as lions in foreground at sunrise, are far easier to evaluate when you're looking at what the camera is actually going to do (e.g. Custom Setting D8 set to On).
- Doing "manual focus touchup" when you have grass in front and in back of a subject is simple: magnify, adjust the manual focus ring with peaking enabled, shoot. Note that in the following shot, most of the Z's Autofocus Area Modes would pick up the foreground bush. Easily corrected.
Read all that and more here:
http://www.sansmirror.com/newsviews/a-nikon-mirrorless-safari.html
^ also valid advantages if you feel like not having those features holds you back. Just gonna note that you can easily get the right exposure with a DSLR (say with spot metering) and that doesn't cost you an extra few thousand dollars.
All that exposes the DSLR for what it is--a tired, old weatherbeaten technology well past its sell-by date. Time to put it out to pasture!
DSLRs are a tried and tested technology that works well. Mirrorless uses similar image sensors, but removes the optical viewfinder and dedicated autofocus module, resulting in a lighter package that relies on the main image sensor to autofocus and provide an electronic preview.
BE VERY WARY of "advice" suggesting otherwise! Some here have a massive--and I do mean MASSIVE--conflict of interest. They own DSLRs, have seen people abandoning ship and not just the development cycles of their lenses, bodies, and accessories slowing, but also their prices rising.
Not really. For starters mirrorless is more expensive. The Nikon Z7 costs $3000, the Sony a9 costs a whopping $3.5K. Sure, some high end DSLRs like the D850 cost $3000, but the real cost for mirrorless is in the lenses.
With DSLRs, there's plenty of old glass from the 1990s and 2000s you can get off ebay and use natively. You technically can get an adapter for mirrorless, but you lose things like autofocus. Then there are little details like Sony's on-sensor phase detect AF only working with certain lenses, while a DSLR's dedicated PDAF sensor will work with all native lenses, including third party ones.
If you are willing to drop autofocus, costs start to line up better because you can mount really old MF lenses on either DSLRs or mirrorless cameras without losing much.
The more people who leave, the more such a trend will accelerate, so they have a vested interest in keeping people within the fold, so to speak.
DON'T FALL FOR IT!
The DSLR ecosystem will continue to exist regardless of what you buy (there's a whole ton of people who prefer DSLRs, and Nikon/Canon will continue to support them), so spending a few thousand dollars on a mirrorless camera, then a few thousand dollars on equivalent lenses is quite insane.
