What follows is a list of things I wish the Z9 had / could do better. I believe these are actually viable – I’m avoiding the common but perhaps unrealistic items like massively improve dynamic range or noise performance or whatever.

Autofocus

Better low-light autofocus

The Z9’s not bad, but it could be better – all cameras could – and in particular I’d love to see some of the caveats eliminated (like having to compromise between accurate exposure previews and autofocus performance).

Better red light autofocus

Purportedly (per chatter on the interwebs) mirrorless cameras typically only use green and/or blue sensels for autofocus, not red. I’m not sure how accurate that is – it’s a strange choice on the face of it, and at least partly false since you can focus on a purely red object – but it does partially track with the actual behaviour of the Z9 (and the Z7 before it), which is to really struggle to autofocus under predominately-red light or with purely red subjects.

This is particularly a problem underwater, and of course in conjunction with many low-light focus aids such as on some Speedlights and strobes.

For my typical subjects and subject matter it’s not a big deal, although in a way that just makes it even more prominent when I am in that situation.

Better subject recognition

This is a broad area, but any improvement in any direction would be good. Things like:

• Recognition of a wider range of subjects (particularly wildlife).
• More reliable detection of eyes (as opposed to e.g. ears & nostrils).
• “Iris” detection or whatever you want to call it – the ability to focus specifically on the iris rather than e.g. eyelashes.
• Better recognition of subject’s heads when they’re not closer to the camera than any other part of the subject.
  
  All too often the animal is in a profile view, or even facing away from me but with their head / face / eyes still in view, and the Z9 very often loses the face and reverts to “centre of mass”, which is usually the animal’s side, or butt. The Z9 really needs to fixate on the head / face / eyes if those are anywhere in view, irrespective of their position relative to the body.

EVF eye tracking

I haven’t used the Canon R3 – and the reviews of its eye tracking are mixed, indicating it’s not quite there yet technically – but it’s clearly going in the right direction with its EVF eye tracking. This is clearly the superior way of selecting your subject / focus point placement.

Less fixation on detected subjects in 3D Tracking

If there’s a subject detected anywhere in the frame, the Z9 will always focus on it in 3D tracking mode, no matter where the focus point is. This is incredibly frustrating and hostile behaviour, especially while subject detection has so many false positives and doesn’t reliably prioritise the right part of the subject (e.g. ignoring the head in favour of the butt).

Instead, it should lock onto the detected subject only if I actually put the focus point over the subject detection box and then engage it. Otherwise, it should ignore detected subjects and focus on what I told it to.

It’s permissible if there’s leeway here, to allow for imperfect positioning of the focus point vs the subject, such as with rapidly-moving subjects. This could be something that’s configurable, to suit people’s differing tastes and needs for how “generous” the camera should be regarding precise placement.

No trade-off with correct exposure preview

All Nikon Z cameras to date – perhaps all mirrorless cameras? – force an unfortunate trade-off between autofocus performance and accurate exposure previews. I believe this is largely a false dichotomy.

The autofocus sensels are on the image sensor (as opposed to a completely separate sensor as most DSLRs) and their gain setting (ISO) seems to be tied to a sensor-wide value. Their performance relies on having a strong signal (i.e. enough light). Thus it’s important that the gain be as high as possible (without clipping). But that might not be what you want for the final exposure – perhaps you’re trying to preserve brighter tones elsewhere in the frame, for example. Thus your autofocus system might not be getting as much light as it’d like, and it performs poorly as a consequence.

The Z9 allows you to either see an accurate exposure preview – at the expense of poorer AF performance if your subject isn’t very bright – or inaccurate exposure (similar to the optical viewfinder experience).

I believe it could do the best of both at only minor inconvenience to dynamic range accuracy – it can adjust the sensor’s ISO to suit the autofocus system, then digitally scale the exposure in the EVF to represent your exposure settings. This does potentially mean crushing the blacks or blowing the highlights in the EVF’s preview (no such issues with the actual photos) but that’s a minor inconvenience in comparison to the alternatives.

Making the ‘strength’ of this tuneable could also help suit every individual’s preferences (e.g. allow up to N stops of such internal adjustment).

Note that it could also in theory adjust the autofocus sensels independently to the imaging sensels used for the EVF / LCD image, and that would of course be the optimal solution. I’m just not sure how viable that is for technical reasons. I also suspect that as autofocus systems continue to evolve into scene- and subject-analysis systems, they’ll need essentially the entire image anyway.

Same autofocus in video mode as stills

This applies broadly – right now in video mode you have more limited options (e.g. no 3D tracking, only the less reliable “subject tracking”), you can’t use custom buttons at all for customised autofocus engagement, and you also have a way less performant autofocus system in general.

It’s baffling that there are these differences. The limitations on button configuration are just arbitrary. And I don’t know what camera resources they’re overloading between autofocus function & video recording, that preclude them both being used simultaneously, but they should stop it. Add more dedicated hardware. Do whatever it takes to make autofocus work identically whether you’re doing stills or video.

It’s clear Nikon pushed harder than ever to make the Z9 a good video camera, so it’s baffling why they didn’t address these flaws along with the boost to recording resolutions, bitrates, and formats.

To elaborate, autofocus in video mode on the Z9 is disappointing. It doesn’t work correctly a lot of the time – outright refusing to focus, or focusing stubbornly on the background no matter what you or your subject do, or just simply missing acceptable focus. Switch to stills mode and autofocus often works perfectly, in comparison. In fact it’s such a dramatic disparity that I sometimes switch to stills mode temporarily just to autofocus. Yes, it’s very frustrating and I miss critical moments, but the alternative is all-too-often that I can’t get anything in focus at all.

Manual focus should of course not be the ‘workaround’, but even aside from the principle of that, it’s just not possible to accurately manually focus while recording video when you have 8k video (~33 megapixels) in a 1.2-megapixel viewfinder. Even in 4k (~8 megapixels) it’s very challenging. Let-alone whether you’re skilled enough to track a moving subject anyway.

Camera modes

Motion-aware aperture priority

The camera should be able to set the shutter speed automatically based on actual subject & camera movement. e.g. if I’m photographing a bird that’s perched, essentially immobile, in limited light, the camera should automatically drop the shutter speed in order to lower the ISO and thus minimise noise. If the bird suddenly starts moving, it should instantly raise the shutter speed to whatever is necessary to freeze the bird’s motion.

In all of this it should understand what shutter speeds are viable given the degree of perceived movement involved – factoring in focal length and recent image stabilisation performance – and including the recent history of camera movement so that it adapts to different users and situations (e.g. buffeting winds, being on a moving platform, etc).

Some cameras – like GoPros – already do a limited variant of this whereby they end an exposure early when they detect significant camera movement. Especially in video mode where you can benefit from inter-frame noise reduction, this is what helps make GoPro footage look exceptionally-well stabilised while remaining surprisingly consistent in exposure and noise levels.

The degree of ‘freezing’ could be configurable along two dimensions:

• Strength. Different folks have different tolerances for blur, so being able to trade-off between pixel-perfect sharpness and noise is important.
• Subject-only vs whole scene. Maybe you want to freeze your subject but don’t care about the background, such as when panning for a bird in flight or moving vehicle. I expect this’d be what most people want most of the time. But sometimes you might really want to freeze the entire scene, even if you’re panning.
  
  This is analogous to exposure compensation settings for use with flash.

Subject-aware shutter priority

I’m quite surprised we don’t already have this, on at least one camera somewhere.

I want the camera to adjust the aperture intelligently to account for the subject’s depth and focal distance. So that I can just set it to basically e.g. “whole head in focus”, and not worry about micro-managing the settings as the subject moves closer or further away.

It should handle multiple subjects too – e.g. for a group photo where people aren’t all neatly in the focus plane it should adjust the aperture to compensate.

Whether intrinsically or through e.g. lens profiles, it should account for curvature of field.

This could be flexible like Programmed Auto mode, where you could use a dial to adjust the depth of field if the camera’s selection doesn’t precisely suit your preferences (since you’ll be making trade-offs between in-focus subjects and background blur).

Controls

Automatic grip selection

I wish the camera could automatically detect which grip I’m using, so that I don’t need to micromanage it with a lock control.

Possibly this could be implemented through some kind of contact detection in the two grips, to tell which is being held? I know it can’t use camera orientation, since it’s not uncommon to use either of the grips when they’re not oriented vertically.

It of course needs to be very reliable (erring, if necessary, on the side of allowing use of the controls vs ignoring them), and work in a wide variety of situations. e.g. with or without gloves, whether the camera / hands are dry or wet, across a wide temperature range, with hands of various sizes, with hand-holds of various types, etc.

Delete & undo

Currently to delete you have to push the delete button twice, because it prompts you to make sure you want to perform the delete. This is nominally required because deletes are immediate and permanent.

The vast majority of the time, I do want to perform the delete. Very rarely is it a mistaken button press.

Doubling the button-presses required gets real old when you’re deleting thousands of photos (and while it’s faster to delete them on a computer, I prefer to do an initial cull in-camera to avoid wasting space on my computer and backups – plus if I’m travelling I may have limited card space and cannot wait until I’m back home).

It also doesn’t add much actual safety – it’s just hard-wired into my muscle memory to double-tap delete, and occasionally I’ll delete something I actually didn’t want to, as a result. So the current system is inefficient and doesn’t work as intended.

What it should instead do is follow user interface best practices dating back to the eighties (if not earlier) – make the delete operation undoable, and therefore not need confirmation every time.

This could be implemented in a variety of ways, each with slight differences in trade-offs. Even a rudimentary implementation, that only allows the most recent delete to be undone, would still be a huge improvement.

An even more robust system would likely not be much more work – e.g. move deleted photos to a separate ‘bin’ folder, just like on a computer. The camera could also make them auto-purge, so if the card is full it’ll start permanently deleting files from the bin as needed to recover space.

Consequently it’d be much safer – even against completely accidental delete button presses – and in-camera image review would involve about a third fewer button presses (currently two deletes plus left or right to move between images for comparison).

Note: how you perform the undo, I’m not sure about. The most common case would be undoing the most recent delete so there should be a way to do that which doesn’t completely interrupt your image review (i.e. no making you use the Menu button or otherwise switch away from the image you’re currently looking at). It could be simply by hitting the ‘i’ button and having an ‘Undo’ option in that menu.

Fix the portrait grip lock switch direction

It currently rotates opposite to the main power switch (on the landscape grip), which is weird and confusing. i.e. push the tab away from you to unlock the portrait controls, which on the landscape control turns the camera off. When I pick the camera up I should be able to use the exact same motion to enable the controls irrespective of which grip I’m holding.

I’d love something that goes even further and lets you actually turn the camera on from the portrait grip controls, but I don’t see a good way to do that (it would interfere with the function of selecting which grip you want to be active). Though this would be moot if the aforementioned automatic grip selection were supported.

Subject detection configuration via customised buttons

It’s great that the Z9 returns the functionality that the D500 et al had years ago, of letting you assign AF-ON plus a specific focus area mode to many buttons. This is super essential for any camera in many circumstances – especially wildlife where you’re often dealing with obscured or unusual subjects. It was particularly remiss of Nikon to leave this out of all their prior Z-mount cameras, since they had such subpar autofocus systems.

However, it still has some limitations in terms of configurability. e.g. you can configure a button to turn subject detection on or off, but it has to be independent of actually engaging autofocus. And you can’t configure it to change the subject detection mode (e.g. from ‘All’ to ‘Animals’).

Ergonomics

Lighter

I almost didn’t call this out, except Canon proved with the R3 that you can shave a significant amount of weight with seemingly no downside. That would be appreciated – it’d be right in line with Nikon’s impressive improvements to their telephoto lenses to make them much lighter than their DSLR forebearers.

Symmetric function buttons in portrait vs landscape grips

It’s baffling to me that there’s three customisable buttons next to the lens mount for the landscape grip, but none for the portrait grip; you can only reach one of the three buttons in portrait mode.

They should add another two buttons for the portrait grip, matching the relative positions of the landscape mode.

There’s still a challenge of button function, if they continue to share a button between the grips, since in landscape mode it’s under your pinky or ring finger while in portrait mode it’s under your index or pointer finger. Ideally the camera would switch automatically depending on which grip you’re actually using, iff there’s a reliable way for it to detect that. If not, it might be worth adjusting the button placements so that you have completely independent button sets between the two orientations (and at least mirror the settings between each set – though I wouldn’t object if they could also be customised independently).

Smaller

It could be smaller without compromising ergonomics – maybe 10-20%. At least w.r.t. the grips. It barely makes the list, though, since the main way to make it substantially smaller is to remove the portrait grip, which arguably defeats the point of a top-line camera. That said, the Z8 (and the Sony Alpha 1 before it) have shown that there is a strong market for a flagship without built-in portrait grip.

Before I got the Z9 I was pretty sure a built-in portrait grip was not for me, though after getting used to the Z9 I’m now more on the fence. I’ve had detachable portrait grips for prior cameras, and I recognise that they just don’t feel as good as a built-in grip. They’re also heavier, and less robust.

EVF / LCD

Larger LCD

I don’t know how it might work ergonomically – good placement of physical buttons is definitely the priority, and there’s only so much space available on a reasonably-sized camera – but it would be really nice if the LCD were substantially bigger. Compared to what we’re used to today with phones, camera LCDs are tiny.

It would need higher resolution to compensate. I’m not thrilled with the Z9’s LCD pixel density, but it’s okay. As long as the pixel density didn’t decrease, it’d be okay.

Lower latency

Though the Z9’s EVF latency appears to the best of any mirrorless camera to date (according to various test reports I’ve seen), there is still visible lag (even in 120Hz mode). It’s not a big deal by any stretch, and the vast majority of the time I don’t perceive it. It’s only if I’m moving really rapidly, especially if changing direction frequently. However, even if I don’t typically perceive it, I wonder if it’s nonetheless having a negative impact on my performance with the camera.

I doubt that higher refresh rates are the solution, at least not directly. The problem is the time it takes for photons hitting the sensor to be reflected in the EVF. It might be technologically impossible to reduce the delay entirely (even before you hit the physical limits), but I hope there’s still improvement possible.

Higher resolution EVF

This didn’t initially make my list, but after much use I do think the Z9 EVF is a tad soft. I can see the pixels, and I do find it’s a bit tricky to judge focus precisely (without digitally zooming in) – moreso than with an optical viewfinder.

Possibly related, I’m a bit mystified as to why image review in the EVF seems so blocky and pixelated compared to on the rear LCD, given the latter is objectively much lower resolution. It seemingly can’t be a hardware problem – perhaps a software error? Whatever it is, fixing it would essentially increase the resolution too, for image review.

Note also that I’m focused on the EVF specifically here. Curiously I don’t see the pixels on the LCD, or at least I never notice them. I think because the viewing distance is so much farther away. I certainly wouldn’t object to a higher pixel-density LCD too, but it’s not something I really need.

The rest & the usuals

None of these last few items are what I would call critical nor actually highlight. They tend to improve incrementally over time in any case. Those improvements are important and appreciated but not noteworthy unless there’s an unusually big leap.

Though admittedly it would be particularly good to at least match the state of the art w.r.t. image quality (or even of much older cameras like the D850).

• Less noise.
• Higher resolution. Though I don’t want to sacrifice anything for minor resolution gains – e.g. to go up to 60MP. For a major jump – e.g. to 100MP – I might be willing to trade off other aspects of performance.
• Better battery life when the camera is left on. As much as its start-up delay is relatively brief compared to most cameras, it’s still far from zero and in any case it costs time to locate & operate the power button every time I bring the camera to my eye.
• CFExpress 4.0 support, for at least a doubling in write speed (although the Z9 currently uses barely more than half the available write performance of CFExpress 2.0 anyway, so in fact there’s room for nearly a 4x improvement with current technology).

1. ≥ 50 image buffer.  In 14-bit RAW.
   
   😂 Nailed it.  The D500 never misses a shutter actuation.  It’s beautiful.  I’m pretty sure it’s ruined all lesser cameras for me.  I can’t stand anything that doesn’t take the photo when I press the shutter, nor anything which fails to keep taking photos until I decide to let go.
2. ≥ 10 FPS.  I’ll even accept complete viewfinder blackout if it means getting beyond 10 FPS.  Sony actually have a new 28 MP sensor that is capable of 18 FPS read-out.  I’ll take it.
   
   🙂 10 FPS it is.  Viewfinder blackout isn’t too bad, but isn’t great either.  18 FPS would have been awesome, and Sony have since demonstrated that you can get 24 FPS in a full frame sensor, so Nikon are still a bit behind, but admittedly 10 FPS does cover my needs most of the time.
3. UHS-II support.  And if I can actually find a card that can really do 300 MB/s, I expect my camera to write at that speed.  None of this half-arsed 60%ish crap that all the UHS-I Nikons have.
   
   😁 XQD and UHS-II support.  With good cards write speeds are indeed very fast.  I can’t complain here.
4. Lower noise.  Across the range, not just at high ISO.  ISO 100 isn’t as clean as I’d like, and I’d really love to be able to use ISO 3200 or above in typical use.  Bonus points for pushing the native ISO lower (50’d be nice, at least).
   
   😕 Not so much.  ISO 100 definitely isn’t cleaner than any other recent Nikon DX camera – even the D5x00 line, let-alone the D7x00.  And high ISOs to my eyes simply aren’t any better – in noise, dynamic range, or colour – either.
5. More, smaller autofocus points, that fill the frame.  Just give me a few hundred in an even grid.  All cross-type, all f/2-optimised at least, and all good down to f8 and -4EV at least.  And better autofocus generally.
   
   🙂 There are indeed a lot more points, with slightly wider coverage, and AF performance is marginally better overall on all those points.  Plus f/8 to -4EV support on quite a few.  So mostly positive.  However, they’re no better at wide apertures than the predecessors, sadly.  Continue to expect frequent focus failures at f/2 or wider apertures.  Possibly this just can’t be fixed in an SLR (as opposed to a mirrorless design).
6. On-sensor phase detection autofocus.  I’d actually be rather interested in a mirrorless DX F-mount body, but even with a traditional DSLR, I want usable autofocus when shooting video.  I’ll make it easier for you, though – I don’t need hundreds, or the high light sensitivity of the ‘viewfinder’ PDAF points.  Just give me some, at least.
   
   😩 Nada.  Zilch.  Zip.  Fail.
7. Let me adjust shooting settings in video mode (aperture, for example).  While recording, too.
   
   😐 Sort of.  I still somehow, sometimes, end up in scenarios where it won’t do what it’s told in video mode.  Plus it still insists on changing settings somewhat arbitrarily when I switch between video & stills mode, which is a frequent and frustrating source of exposure errors and lost moments.
8. ≥ 4K video @ 60 FPS.  At serious bitrates – at least 200 Mbps.  Preferably with a H.265 encoder option.
   
   😕 4K yes, but only up to 30 FPS, and not at particularly high bitrates.  And still no H.265.  It’s hard to be too critical, because overall video quality is massively better than the 1080p on all its predecessors, but it’s still no match for notable video-oriented cameras (e.g. Panasonic’s GH4 & GH5, or many recent Sonys).
9. And/or, full-sensor read-out video.  I’d accept being stuck with 1080p60 if it were at least from the full sensor.  But it still has to have higher bitrates than today’s mediocre offerings.
   
   🙁 Nope – pretty severe crop in 4K mode.  This has been challenging in some of the video productions I’ve filmed, where it’s simply impossible to get rectilinear wide-angle video out of the D500.  Even using an 8mm diagonal fish-eye lens, and its distortions aside, doesn’t really give you the ultra-wide experience.
10. Put the top-plate LCD back the way it was, on the D7100.  What the hell, D7200?  What the hell?
    
    🙃 I forget what my complaint was with the D7200 top plate LCD… but the D500’s top plate LCD works nicely, and I have no complaints about it.  So success, either way.
11. Quieter shutter.  Something more like the D810, or better, preferably.
    
    😔 Nope.  Still a loud clickity-clack.  On the upside, it comes across slightly moreso ‘impressive’ than merely annoying, at 10 FPS.
12. GPS.
    
    😡 WTF Nikon.  WTF.

    No, SnapBridge doesn’t count.  It’s #%!@ing useless.  It records the wrong coordinates almost all the time.  It’s ridiculously laggy – associating GPS locations from hours prior with some photos.  Absolutely a disaster.

13. Deeper, wider hand grip.  My fingers are in fact more than an inch long.  How ’bout that.
    
    🙂 Yep, the grip is improved, along the same trendline as all Nikon’s more recent DSLR.  Though it’s not actually wider – narrower, if anything – it is significantly deeper, and that works too.
14. Moar pixels!  But honestly, only if it’s amazingly more (≥ 40 MP) or otherwise at no noticeable cost w.r.t. image quality, or performance.
    
    🙁 Alas no.  21 MP isn’t too bad, but it is very slightly noticeably less real-world resolution than the myriad 24 MP Nikon DX DSLRs that preceded it.  And it really pales in comparison to the new D850, which has shown you can have quite a bit more of your cake & eat it too.
15. Real weather-sealing.  Pentax are kicking your arse here.  I should not have to bat an eyelid at rain.  I should be able to test Sigma’s 150-600 S and have it fail from moisture or dust damage before the camera body.
    
    🤔 Maybe.  I guess I’m not willing to experiment too rigorously with this.  It’s certainly claimed to be significantly more weather-resistant.
16. Lighter.  Always lighter.
    
    😒 Sadly no.  For the most part the extra weight doesn’t bother me, but it does add up, and it does hamper the user experience a little bit.
17. Wider, more recessed viewfinder cup.  I shouldn’t have to force my face through the camera in order to see the whole frame, nor buy third-party cups to actually block out glare.
    
    😐 Somewhat.  The viewfinder is indeed very nice & big by contemporary standards – even full-frame contemporaries – and that does make a big difference, which must be given due appreciation.  But, the eye-cup itself is still basically non-existent, so glare and light leakage remain ever as problematic as before, and really demand not-entirely-cheap accessories to fix.
18. High-speed video options (> 60 FPS).  But only if it’s at usable resolutions – none of this “400 FPS but only at a tiny resolution” crap like the Nikon Vn series.  Even little tiny GoPros can do this.  Seriously, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
    
    😞 Apparently high frame rates in general – even just 60 FPS, let-alone anything you’d really consider “high” – weren’t in their design goals.  Not a big deal compared to most of the wishlist items here, but still a bit disappointing not to have.
19. Magnify the viewfinder image in 1.3x mode.  I really want to like and use 1.3x mode, but it feels so pointless today.
    
    🙁 Still nothing here.  And the extra 1.3x crop doesn’t even boost FPS like it did on the D7x00 line, and buffer sizes are so gloriously large that you needn’t shrink your files on their account, so there’s very little point to it.  If you’re worried about SD / XQD card space, or disk space, I wonder if the D500 is the right tier for you anyway (you can get a lot of hard drive space – like, 50+ TB, for the price of the D500 body alone).
20. Dedicated AF-ON button.  Sometimes I actually want to use the AE-L button for its labelled purpose.  Just give me two damn buttons already.
    
    🤣 Not just this, but they actually made a whole dedicated AF joystick.  Above & beyond on this one.  The joystick is a tad fiddly w.r.t. pushing it for autofocus engagement vs swiping it for point movement, but still, I like it.

    And, they let you map different autofocus modes to different buttons, so you can have something like four AF-ON buttons, essentially, each one operating completely different autofocus modes. I never conceived of it, and might not have even though it that interesting if you’d merely described it to me, but after using it, it’s awesome.

21. Longer body.  I have actual human hands, not baby monkey ones.  I want a camera that actually fits in them, without my bottom two fingers falling off the bottom.  (without spending $7,000 on a D4s)
    
    ☺️ Yep.  I have no issues with my pinky falling off the bottom, even without a portrait grip attached – which is perfect, because the Dx line’s integrated portrait grip adds too much hand grip length, and heft.
22. Wifi.  But only if you actually provide a remote control app that’s full-featured.  Don’t even bother including your current wifi system.  I already had to buy a CamRanger because of your half-arsedness.
    
    😤 Unsurprisingly continued disappointment here.  Nikon appear bizarrely incapable of implementing connectivity intelligently, let-alone well.
23. Provide an AC adapter for what it actually costs – i.e. $5.  $120?!  Are you insane?  Here’s an idea:  just integrate USB 3 as a USB-C connector (or better yet, Thunderbolt 3).  Single-port AC power, clean video output, and tethering.  And in that case, give me at least two such ports, so I can tether and AC power simultaneously.
    
    😠 Still no convergence on a superior power & connectivity solution.  Yes, there’s USB 3, but that’s really not very impressive nor useful to begin with in its current incarnation.  Still no sensibly priced power tethering option.  Sigh.
24. Touch-screen.  Surprised to see it so far down the list?  Meh.  All I really want is double-tap to zoom and touch-to-focus.
    
    😃 I’m going to give Nikon extra due on this one, because while yes they did a touch screen, and the implementation is decent (though the inability to use touch to change settings etc is a dumb omission, and stark in contrast to their much cheaper DSLRs which do support that now).

    But what really pleases me is actually the resolution & image quality generally of the screen.  I evidently didn’t appreciate how much this matters – given I left it off my wishlist entirely – but in hindsight I really do like the upgraded rear LCD.  Kudos, Nikon!

And in hindsight there’s a few items that should have been on my wishlist, but weren’t:

1. Less mirror slap.  The D500 has a pretty hefty thwack that you can easily feel shocking into your hand, and it produces serious sensor-motion blur at even moderate, let-alone genuinely low, shutter speeds.  It’s actually a far greater disabler in low-light or narrow-aperture photography than the image quality off the sensor itself.
2. Electronic front & rear shutters.  Like the D850 now has.  Ideally this wouldn’t compromise shooting otherwise – as sadly it does with the D850 – but even with the D850’s implementation, it’d still be exceedingly useful  in things like time lapses, for combating the pretty horrendous mirror slap the D500 has.
3. More accurate and consistent autofocus.  I talked about autofocus points, and some of the specs that imply accuracy & consistency, but I should have just said:  give me an autofocus system that actually bloody works reliably.   The D500 continues the Nikon (and in fairness, DSLR-generally) tradition of troublesome autofocus.  From systematic focus errors in bodies and body+lens combinations, to limited abilities to even manually correct for that in the camera (really, a single adjustment setting for the entire lens?!).  The new “autotune” feature for autofocus adjustment is a nice notion, and it’s certainly better than nothing, but in practice it isn’t that reliable itself, and it only really scratches the surface of the autofocus issues.