Hands On : Nikon D7000

In the past several years there have been a few digital SLR cameras that have been real game changers for me and in each instance, allowed me to push the photography envelope even further. While I had been shooting film for years, digital was an unexplored territory for me. It was the Nikon D70s that was my gateway into the digital SLR world; it wasn't particularly stunning and was more or less useless above ISO 400 but nonetheless, I was hooked. In December of 2007, after being on a long waiting list at my favorite camera store, the Nikon D3 was mine.  I didn't have to just learn a new, more complex, camera but I also had to learn a new of shooting in low light.  Previously unimaginable, I was able to get usable shots at ISO 3200 and even 6400!  It completely blew my mind and forever changed me as a wedding photographer.  About a year after the release of the Nikon D3, I became enamored with the silky smooth video that was being captured from HD digital SLR cameras.  The Canon 5D Mark II lead the pack with its full frame sensor and 1080p video capture.  Suffice it to say, it was my next game-changing acquisition.

Fast forward to Fall, 2010...  Nikon [finally] announces that they're releasing a HD digital SLR that records in 1080p and is to offer stellar low light performance.  Enter the Nikon D7000.

This isn't going to be some drawn out review of all of the features of the new camera.  Nor will it be full of photos of the camera and detail of the menu system.  You can head over to dpreview for all that technical stuff.  I've only had the camera for a couple of days and have not yet had a chance to run it through every single field test imaginable yet.  As a wedding photographer, you can rest assured that it will be used to shoot everything from dimly lit churches to fast motion in bright daylight.  For now though, I'm sticking to what I've found out so far.

Ergonomics : As this is ultimately a prosumer camera, it's a lot lighter and smaller than my D3.  When mounting my 70-200mm f/2.8 on it, the camera body feels somewhat anemic in comparison.  Hopefully it will begin to feel more natural once I get a battery grip on it.  I have to say that I'm really liking that the toggle for video live view is right next to where my right thumb rests on the back of the camera.  Looks like they took a page out of the Canon 7D book on this. 


User Interface : Being a long time Nikon shooter, most aspects of the user interface, from the command dial to the GUI, seems familiar enough to navigate through without needing to refer to the manual.  Speaking of which, I still haven't opened the manual yet.  It does have some elements that are borrowed from some of Nikon's consumer cameras that took me a little getting used to.  One in particular is the toggle for selecting between continuous and single AF servo modes.  On every other Nikon digital SLR I have, it's a 3 position switch that's in the front of the camera body.  The D7000 has a 2 position switch with a button on it that must be depressed while using the rear sub-command dial to change between continuous and single modes.  Maybe I should pat my head and rub my belly at the same time too...

Speed : The three aspects of speed that I'm most concerned with are: write speed, CH shooting speed, and AF lock speed.  The D7000 scores good marks in all three categories.  I use class 6 SDHC cards that the D7000 seems to have no problem writing to.  Seems to slow down a little bit when writing to two cards at the same time but this should not be surprising.  Nikon claims 6FPS while shooting in CH mode; this sounds about right.  While there have been many occasions where the 11FPS on my D3 has come in handy; I think 6FPS is more than sufficient on this camera.  Getting the AF to lock quickly was not an issue when shooting stills.  The continuous 3D AF tracking in video mode however seemed to be a bit lacking.  Okay, it was a lot lacking...  While it's a step in the right direction, I really hope that the contrast detection-based AF algorithms will get make some major strides as the next generation of Nikon pro bodies come out soon.

Video : Finally... 1080p recording comes to Nikon.  I'm super excited about this and look forward to throwing just about every lens I have at this camera to see how it performs.  A couple of major observations so far though:

1. Only 24p is available at 1080 resolution.  I prefer shooting at 30p so I have a few extra frames in case I need to drop the speed a little.
2. Continuous AF is not quite mature enough to trust using.
3. Glad Nikon dropped motion JPEG for the codec.  h.264 is now widely recognized and just performs better than motion JPEG in my opinion.  
4. Up to 20 minutes of straight recording time is class leading.  My 5DII stops around 10-12 minutes.  I haven't tried running video for long periods of time yet so I'm not sure how prone the CMOS sensor is to overheating.  Another thing about a CMOS sensor, it does suffer from the "Jello effect" so remember not to pan too quickly.
5. With an APS-C sized sensor, it is worth noting the sensor

High ISO Performance : It's not a D3.  For some comparisons, I took a series of shots with one of my D3 bodies and compared it to a set of shots of a similar setup by the D7000.  For stills, I feel comfortable pushing the D7000 to about ISO 1250.  If I had to, I'd probably push the video to ISO 3200 if I absolutely had to.  Overall, it's great for a prosumer camera but I don't plan on replacing my D3 bodies with this. 

Here are a couple of side by side comparisons in Lightroom of similarly shot images:

Check out my photo gallery of D7000 sample photos and videos.  I hope to get some wedding footage with it in the next couple of weeks.