When comparing Canon 7D Mark II vs Nikon D500, the Slant community recommends Nikon D500 for most people. In the question“What are the best cameras for sports/action photography?” Nikon D500 is ranked 4th while Canon 7D Mark II is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose Nikon D500 is:
The camera has a tilting screen allowing easy above the head or near the ground shots, a touchscreen for easily adjusting AF point and a joystick for adjusting it even faster.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Flicker detection
The camera can detect flickering light sources and sync up with them to shoot at peak brightness in order to avoid underexposing the image by accident.
Pro Fast autofocus
Reliable and quick autofocusing system.
Pro Easy to use
The camera has a tilting screen allowing easy above the head or near the ground shots, a touchscreen for easily adjusting AF point and a joystick for adjusting it even faster.
Pro Good buffer
Buffer can hold 200 compressed or 71 uncompressed RAW files. To achieve the 200-shot compressed RAW speed, you'll need a XQD card.
Pro Excellent autofocus
D500 has 153 AF points of which you can select 55. 99 AF points are cross-type (of which 35 are selectable). 15 AF points work with f/8 lenses (of which 9 are selectable). The autofocus works down to LV -4.
Autofocus is fast at 10 frames per second with great accuracy - in autofocus tests performed by Tony Northrup the D500 trailed D5 just slightly by getting 16% fewer of shots in focus and 1DX Mark II by about 18%.
Pro Great AF point coverage
Pro Can automatically microadjust lens focal point for autofocusing
Pro Illuminated buttons
Makes shooting in the dark easier.
Pro Can record to an external recorder over HDMI
Cons
Con Lacks 4K video capabilities
Con Dynamic range could be better
Con Non-tilting screen
Con No focus peaking or zebras
Con No touchscreen
Con No Wi-Fi
Con Lacks mode dial for custom presets
Unlike some other Nikon cameras, D500 doesn't have a mode dial that allows quickly switching between custom presets.
Con Video has a 2.2x 35mm-equivalent crop factor
The camera has a 1.5x 35mm-equivalent crop factor and shooting video adds another 1.5x crop factor on top of that resulting in a 2.2x 35mm-equivalent crop factor. The effective sensor size is near the size of a MFT sensor. That means you would need wider lenses to achieve the same result in each situation.