I’ve always been a bit of a Nikonfangirl.

In my first “real” job after university, I worked as a journalist on our local weekly newspaper. Our paper was too small to have an in-house photographer, so, once a week, a photographer from our parent title, The Scotsman, would come out, and spend the day driving around with either me or our editor (or, most often, both) taking photos for all of the stories we were planning to run that week.

As well as being great company, Norman was also a fantastic photographer, and I always enjoyed watching him at work. I was just starting to get interested in photography myself at the time, so I was constantly asking him for tips and advice, and two things he said have stuck with me ever since:

01. Get the best quality lens you can afford

and

02. Get it from Nikon

I duly went out and bought my very first Nikon SLR camera (Because these were the days when you had to get your photos printed out on paper and everything: so quaint!) (Actually, they weren’t: we totally had digital photography, but I’d done a photography course in high school, which had included developing print photos, and I had this image of myself setting up a dark room in the bathroom or something, and developing my own photos from scratch. In retrospect, it’s a good idea I didn’t share this idea with parents, given that I was still living with them at the time…), and I’ve been loyal to the brand ever since.

Terry estimates that our various Nikon cameras have taken over half a million photos in the time we’ve owned them. Our current DSLR (The Nikon D7000) has taken 157,868 (Yes, I counted them all individually. OK, no I didn’t – I checked it here…), and although it’s still going strong, given that this particular camera is rated to last for around 150,000 “clicks”, we’ve been thinking about upgrading it for a while now. Not only is photography an essential part of my job as a blogger, it’s also an essential part of, well, my life, basically: I’ve always had a passion for documenting everything (It’s the reason this blog exists, basically), and, with a new baby on the way, it’s even more important to us right now that we be able to take some good quality photos, to document his life, too.

Enter the Nikon D7500, which, as I’ve mentioned, Nikon have very kindly been allowing us to test-run for the past few weeks. I’ve already talked a bit about how this camera has revolutionised my blog photography by allowing us to take much better photos, even in locations, and weather conditions that we might not otherwise have considered, but we also wanted to be able to use it to document some of our memories, too, so, last weekend, we took the camera for a day out in Edinburgh, taking in both the city centre and the beach front at Cramond:

As it turned out, this ended up being a pretty thorough test for the D7500, because, true to form, Edinburgh decided to basically cycle through all of the lighting conditions known to man, so we were faced with everything from harsh sunlight to glowering skies, and even some fog: thanks, Edinburgh! We also took the opportunity to test the camera out indoors (Well, you didn’t expect me to walk down Princes Street and NOT go into any of the shops, did you?), and at night, and I’m happy to report that it beat our expectations every single time. This camera really is just an absolute dream to shoot with: as I said, our existing DSLR is still going strong, and I was honestly pretty happy with it, but this newer model has made such a difference, both in terms of the sharpness of the images it produces, plus the colours, which I feel are much more “true” than the ones we were getting previously.

One of my favourite features is the way the D7500 uses Bluetooth to wirelessly sync with my iPhone using the Snapbridge app. This means we can take photos with the DSLR, and, within minutes, I can have them up on Instagram, without having to download them first, and it also allows me to use my phone as a remote control, so I can take selfies with the D7500, using my phone to look at the live view from the camera, and then to trigger the shutter:

I’ve also found that the photos it produces require much less in the way of editing – most of the shots in this post are direct from the camera, with me only having to adjust the brightness/contrast in a few of them, which is such a time-saver, seriously.

As for Terry, meanwhile, well, as much as he loves taking photos, his real passion has always been videography, so he was particularly keen to try out the video capabilities of the camera. The results are below, and, just to answer the obvious question, while the majority of this video was filmed on the D7500 , the shots of the camera itself obviously were not – those were mostly done with our existing Nikon D7000!