Nikon D5500 Field Test

Having shot with film for about 25 years up until 2006, I finally took the digital plunge and cut my teeth on the now legendary Nikon D40, a real ground-breaker of a camera for its time and price point, which brought enthusiast-grade performance and image quality to the masses, and myself. (Our D40 is still going strong almost a decade later, though has long since been "acquired" by my wife.) Since joining IR three years ago though, I've primarily worked in the mirrorless world, including reviews in the PEN line from Olympus and the NEX-gone-Alpha line from Sony among others, and have not had much recent DSLR experience other than a brief period with the D3300 for an indoor sports on a budget article. But that experience, coupled with the first time I picked up the D5500, led me to want to come full circle and dig back into the mid-level DSLR world.

In my first Field Test for the D5500, I took a look at the positive ergonomic changes to this popular line, and began exploring the extensive ISO range that this rather affordable camera yields. For this second report, I'll be examining how the ISO range pairs with the continuous autofocus and burst performance by attempting to conquer the toughest photographic terrain: capturing fast motion in low light.

As I mentioned at the onset of our Indoor Sports on a Budget tutorial, capturing fast motion is fairly easy if you have a lot of outdoor ambient light, and capturing images in low light is fairly easy if your subjects aren't in motion. But attempting to capture the combination on a budget can be daunting! Most pros and even seasoned enthusiasts often pair high-end, full frame DSLRs, which have excellent continuous autofocus performance and solid high ISO performance, with lenses that have bright, fast apertures to accomplish this rather difficult feat. Those gear assets coupled with a lot of practice and real world experience all merge to create the ability to capture crisp and tight images of athletic motion in challenging low light environments.