Nikon D7000’s best features
After several months of using my Nikon D7000 and taking over 15,000 images, I feel I can give an honest review of its best features.
1. Long lasting battery life.
I’ve mentioned it before, the Nikon EN-EL15 rechargeable battery is long lasting. Anyone who shoots for a living knows how important a long lasting battery can be to a project. For the past 4 months, shooting three to four days out of the week, I manage to get about 1500-2000 images out of a fully charged EN-EL15 battery running it down only to 30%. which means I’m sure I could get at least 2500 shots if I let it run down to 0%.
To be fair, I must admit that the majority of the images were taken in continuous high speed mode (CH). Someone taking single shots and refocusing each time after taking a picture may experience a lower number.
2. Size, feel and toughness – it’s just right.
The D7000 is not as small as the D90 and definitely not as large as the D300, but for me it’s like the three bears, it fits just right. For some reason, the ergonomics of the D7000 feels right. Maybe it’s the size of my hand or something, but when I hold the camera, my fingers instantly know where all the buttons are located.
Add a basic 35mm or 50mm lens and the D7000 is almost as light as a high end compact camera, making it easy to carry around all day. Attach a heavy Nikon 80-200mm 2.8D ED-AF, like I did this weekend taking pictures of the Huntington Beach Duck-A-Thon, and feel confident the lens won’t strip the mount off the camera if you let it hang off your shoulder. I don’t recommend doing this yourself, but I have been doing this since the late 1990’s with all my mid to higher end Nikon bodies, and never had a problem. The D7000 is built like a rock, it cant take a little beating and still work perfectly.
3. Custom “U” presets.
I love the custom presets that the D7000 allows. Since I shoot several styles, this is a great feature. This allows me to make instance changes to my camera, spending less time fiddling and more time capturing the special moments.
Nikon D7000 users who are not taking advantage of this feature are missing out on a function that, if used correctly, will result in better photos.
4. Excellent high ISO low noise results.
We’ve all heard the excellent results the D7000 has with high ISO settings. It’s all true. I proved it with a sample of the Las Vegas lights taken with a Nikon D7000 at night. Using an ISO of 1000, shutter speed of 1/125 and an aperture setting of f/3.5, the image result is spotless of any high ISO noise. No I didn’t use a tripod, it was hand held.
Indoors, the D7000 great ISO results allows me to shoot hand held with no problems. The image on the right was taken at 1250 ISO, f/5 and 100/sec. It’s a photo taken indoors at the Venetian in Las Vegas.
5. Flawless natural colors.
Whether you’re shooting people in a studio or outdoors in natural light, the D7000 allows the user to have full control over the image, especially the colors so you don’t need to make many if any corrections with a photo editing software in post production.
I took this image of Hana Smith, the current Miss Huntington Beach, at the Duck-A-Thon event. It was a very dark, overcast and cold day, but the Nikon D7000 captured her beauty and natural colors with ease. Other than the image being cropped and reduced in size, I didn’t make any color adjustments in post production.
From a real D7000 user.
Do a Google search for Nikon D7000 features, good or bad, specs or reviews and you’ll find all types of articles. Most are full of scientific “tests”, like analyzing the 2000 ISO image at 1:1, but how many have owned a D7000 for several months and used it in real life situations for any significant time? How many have taken 15,000+ images and given a fair review of the D7000 good features? Not too many.
