Test driving the Nikon D5 with College Baseball

Nikon D5, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, Sigma TC-2001 2x, ISO 1400, ƒ/5.6, 1/4000

Today I took the D5 for a test drive with college baseball. I first started to shoot the game like I did with my Nikon D4 which was using 1/2000 for shutter speed.

Also when I setup the camera for one of the Shooting Banks. When I did this I forgot that the Quality of the file setting would be default for JPEGs and not RAW. So the first batch of images was shooting in JPEG mode.

Frankly those images were pretty awesome. Here is one of first base that was shot as JPEG.

Nikon D5, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, Sigma TC-2001 2x, ISO 640, ƒ/5.6, 1/2000

The Nikon D5 is so good with ISO I decided to crank the shutter speed to 1/4000. You can see in the first frame at the top how awesome the results were even at an ISO 1400.

Nikon D5, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, Sigma TC-2001 2x, ISO 1400, ƒ/5.6, 1/4000

I can tell you one thing for sure, if you want your images to look really sharp one the best things you can do with sports is crank the shutter speed up. Next time I have a day game I think I will go for 1/8000.

Nikon D5, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, Sigma TC-2001 2x, ISO 1000, ƒ/5.6, 1/4000

Here you can see that at 1/4000 you can see how hitting the ball was actually bending the bat. 

Nikon D5, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, Sigma TC-2001 2x, ISO 2800, ƒ/8, 1/4000

I wanted the ball and the pitcher tact sharp and so I increased the depth-of-field to ƒ/8. I think the quality of the ISO 2800 was great for these photos.

Once I get all the calibrating done on my settings for sports I will post those and more images in the future. This was the test drive and I can tell you I am really impressed with the larger image, dynamic range, high ISO and focus on the camera. All of these are upgrades over a stellar Nikon D4 camera.

I think my clients will be getting a better image due to the camera. I think Nikon really hit this one out of the park with the Nikon D5.