Congratulations Alex Vincent, March 2024 PFRE Photographer of the Month! The theme this month was "Kitchen". Alex Vincent - #906 Yvonne Raaijmakers - #909 Peter Wingfield - #902 Here's what Alex has to say: Thank you for the award of Photographer of th ...
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
The Nikon D500 offers high-resolution tilt, versatility, and durability, making it a great camera for your real estate shots. However, this camera needs an equally high-quality lens. In this article, I are going to give you my choices for the best lens for Nikon D500 and how they perform compared against each other.
Quick Navigation
From kit and wide-angle to telephoto, I've broken down the best zoom and prime lenses for the D500. As a result, these lenses are among the best in their category.
The Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G is a lens that’s easy to handle and offers excellent telephoto zooming ability to produce high-quality photos. Granted, the Yongnuo YN35mm lens beats this lens when shooting in low light, but this lens’s 70-300mm focal length is the best option for daylight photos. It has a built-in focusing motor that breathes life into images, enhancing the details.
The AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm design provides clear metering information to Nikon cameras fully compatible with the D-type design. Cameras that do not have this feature may miss out on some autofocus and metering functions.
Handheld shooting is incomparable given its lightweight and solid build, making it a go-to lens for any photographer. Its built-in Vibration Reduction feature enhances its stability resulting in sharper images with single takes.
The Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G is the most popular lens for Nikon d500. It is a real estate photographer's must-have for everyday use as it has a fast aperture that allows you to shoot high-quality images with a shallow depth of field. This creates a natural background blur (bokeh) unlike the Yongnuo YN35mm lens that produces circular contrasts, making it perfect at creating natural perspectives in images.
The Nikon's Silent Wave Motor feature improves optical focus by converting 'moving waves' into rotational energy. This supports high-energy auto-focusing that is fast, accurate, and extremely quiet. The fact that the 50mm f/1.8D lens is not compatible with all Nikon cameras is maybe its worst flaw.
The YONGNUO YN35mm f/2 lens is an excellent prime choice with a 35mm focal length and an aperture of f/2.0. Its focal length is highly magnifying, making it the best affordable choice for real estate
It features multi-coated glass elements for minimal flaring or ghosting in very bright settings and proper color renditions. It works suitably with full-frame camera bodies where it provides an equivalent of 65mm focal length.
The gold-plated contacts on the mount look good aesthetically and offer reliable functionality with the camera you are using. Its price is a third that of Nikkor 70-200mm but provides similar high-quality image results.
The Sigma 35 mm f/1.4 lens’s high performance is accredited to its solidity, fast and quiet autofocus, and affordability. Although the Sigma 35mm is smaller than the existing Sigma 20mm f/1.4, it is heavier, giving it more stability when shooting.
It renders sharp images, seamless and pleasant bokeh images with high control of optical aberrations. Central to its design is a sophisticated optical system that integrates 15 elements in 11 groups, an 'F' Low Dispersion element, Extraordinary Low elements, and Special Low Dispersion elements that minimize all types of aberrations.
The aperture ring is positioned ergonomically and controlled by the photographer. It can be de-clicked to adjust exposures allowing smooth shooting transitions.
The Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 boasts 2 FLD glass elements producing distinct photos covering wide zoom angles. The optical stabilizer (OS) has an accelerometer that improves vertical and horizontal
Unlike the Tamron lens, the 150-600mm is heavy at nds hence its difficult for the user to carry it from one place to another. Its front element does not accept filters but instead has a protective casing over it that slips over to protect against dust.
Designed for the most demanding types of
The Sigma 20mm f/1.4 offers excellent edge to edge performance. It is best suited for real estate
Its optical design has 13 elements and 11 group construction, massively made from Super-Low-Dispersion glass, two aspheric elements, and Fluorite-like Low Dispersion glass. This structure minimizes the extent of aberrations.
The lens has the Hypersonic Motor working manually for quiet and fast autofocus and drives an inner system that maintains high image quality. The aperture has nine blades for good color renditions of background blur, enhancing selective focus. However, unlike the Sigma 150-600mm, it lacks an optical stabilizer, but its weight covers this disadvantage.
The Nikkor 50 mm f/1.4G is a versatile well-suited lens when shooting a field view with higher brightness. Characterized by the fast f/1.4G aperture, this lens excels at shooting conditions with lower lighting and isolating subjects to achieve selective
Its super integrated coating enhances color renditions and contrasts by cutting on the flare. The nine-bladed aperture produces a seamless bokeh image quality, and its Silent Wave Motor offers accurate autofocus, fast and quiet performance with full-time manual focus.
It does not support manual modes like the Tamron f/2.8 Di VC USD G2 but provides an average length for FX-format Nikon cameras and a 75mm focal length for the DX model.
The Nikkor 28-300mm lens is the only all-in-one lens with a Vibration Reduction II IS and ED Glass that offers a wide focal length perfect for real estate images. However, it has sharpness issues beyond 105mm, but even so, it’s a good lens.
The Vibration Reduction feature provides image stabilization at 3.5 stops that are not blurred, eliminating shadows resulting in well-focused photos. It produces a slow whining sound during autofocusing, unlike the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 50 mm f/1.4G that has a Silent Wave Motor which removes the noise.
The versatility of Nikkor 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR is evident in its wide focal length that offers optimized high-level sharpness for both formats, FX and DX. It boasts many of Nikon's advanced technologies offering unrivaled performance in videography.
The Tamron 24-70mm F/2.8 lens is a wide-angle macro lens with a broad zoom range. It has two refractive elements, three molded glass elements, three low-dispersion elements, and one hybrid aspherical element that help eliminate the possibility of distortion and suppress aberrations.
This lens lacks the Super-Multi-Layer Coating, which minimizes ghosting on Sigma 20mm f/1.4 DG HSM; still, it controls flare and shadowing, using BBAR and eBand coatings that improve image color fidelity and contrast. The USM autofocus motor helps in balancing its optical characters that deliver quick and precise autofocus performance. This is the best-recommended micro-lens for videography.
For efficient handheld shooting in dim-light conditions, the Tamron SP 24-70mm f/2.8 Di VC USD G2 utilizes the Vibration Compensation feature to shoot sharper images. The lens has a fluorine coating on the front element that protects against moisture and other environmental conditions.
Nikon D500 is a crop factor camera that you can use in real estate
The following features can help you know what to consider when purchasing a lens for Nikon D500. The following table highlights the most crucial features for a better understanding.
| Lenses | Minimum Focus Distance (Iches) | Focal Length | Aperture |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 | 58.8 | 70-300mm | f/4.5-5.6 |
| Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 | 17.76 | 50mm | f/1.8 |
| Yongnuo 35mm f/2.0 | 9.6 | 35mm | f/2.0 |
| Sigma 35mm f/1.4 | 11.81 | 35mm | f/1.4 |
| Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 | 22.83 | 150-600mm | f/5-6.3 |
| Sigma 20 mm f/1.4 | 11.81 | 20mm | f/1.4 |
| Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 | 17.72 | 50mm | f/1.4 |
| Nikkor 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 | 19.69 | 28-300mm | f/3.5-5.6 |
| Nikkor 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 | 14.96 | 24-70mm | f/2.8 |
Generally, real estate interiors have poor lighting conditions, and introducing some sources of light results in ghosting and flares, making your images less appealing. Flare is an effect that occurs when you introduce a stronger source of light.
When light hits the lens, it gets scattered across the glass resulting in some unpleasant artifacts across your photos. If you want to overcome these issues, consider getting a lens with a super multi-layer coating such as Sigma 35mm f/1.4.
The coating helps suppress surface reflections, flares, and ghosting, increasing contrast and color accuracy in the resulting photos.
Generally, the interior rooms of a real estate property may not have sufficient space for you to put up your tripod, forcing you to shoot handheld. Keeping in mind that there might also be insufficient lighting in the rooms, you may need to use slower shutter speeds to take sharp images.
The ideal way to prevent the issue of unwanted shakes that leads to unsteady videos and blurry images is to invest in a lens that comes equipped with an image stabilization system such as Nikkor 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6.
The system helps compensate for the unwanted camera shake effect when shooting handheld resulting in stable videos and sharp images. However, with your camera mounted on a tripod, the system might begin hunting for shakes, making your images blurry.
Focal length is the distance between the lens and the image sensor when the subject is in focus. It determines how much of the scene the camera lens will be able to view at a certain time. A shorter focal length captures a wider angle of view than a longer focal length.
Considering that you might want to take exterior images of a property in a single shot, you should go for a lens with a wide-angle perspective, such as Tamron 24-70mm f/2.8. However, wide-angle lenses may cause distortions that make your exterior images appear curved.
Sometimes in real estate
Considering that magnification shares the same concept with focal length, a long focal length results in a narrow angle of view which fills the entire frame with a small subject.
If you want to shoot a faraway subject, consider going for a lens with a longer focal length, such as Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3.
Generally, the full-frame lenses are much larger than lenses for crop factor cameras as they are designed to fit the full-frame sensor, which measures 35mm like the traditional film.
The Nikon D500 is an APS-C camera with a sensor size that is around 1.5 times smaller than that of the full-frame camera. This makes it have a crop effect when you mount the lenses.
The Nikon D500 comes with interchangeable flange-mount systems that help you attach the F-mount lenses. Normally, the F mount system is used to enhance the versatility of the camera by interchanging the lenses.
The focal length, aperture settings, and sharpness are the most important factors to consider when choosing the ideal lens for your Nikon D500. Other factors like stability, build quality, and portability are also crucial. I feel you are ready to choose an alternative after reading my extensive guide that walks you through the comparisons of these items.
And, if you have this camera, then make sure to check out my review of the top external flash for the Nikon D500.
