WebException is a good approch to get the Real cause of 500 error,
catch (WebException ex)
{
using (var stream = ex.Response.GetResponseStream())
using (var reader = new StreamReader(stream))
{
Console.WriteLine(reader.ReadToEnd());
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// Something more serious happened
// like for example you don't have network access
// we cannot talk about a server exception here as
// the server probably was never reached
}