Why Nikon D7000 sucks for me
Hey,
First of all I will say that I am rather new to this stuff. I bought my first DSLR 3 years ago, it was a Canon 1000D. I can only say good things about that camera; sturdy, inexpensive, light and very suitable for any newbie. Having a decent all around, inexpensive tele lens and prime, like 50mm f1.8, allowed me to cover pretty much all the situations. However, in low light the entry level camera wasn't that great, AF was pretty useless and the noise was very high at higher ISO.
So after 3 years ... I decided was time for an upgrade. I was considering either a Cannon 60D or a Nikon D7000. On paper paper the D7000 is superior when it comes to sensor and image quality compared with the Canon counterpart. I knew I could easily sell my Canon lenses, so I decided to spend the extra money and buy the Nikon D7000 with a new set of lenses.
At first sight D7000 impressed me with the amount of features it provides. The focus seemed fast even in low light, the 39 points AF system looked great, body switch for bracketing is also great, lots of settings you can do before and after you took the shot, good stuff.
However, after the first hour or so, I start noticing that it is heavy! I don’t consider this a drawback is just an observation. However, with an all around zoom and an SB800 it is almost 3 kilos (~6.5lb). Beware if it is your first DSLR and you expect to carry it all over..
Now the things that really bothers me. The button layout pretty much sucks compared to the Canon, they are hard to find and even after months of using the camera, it still gives me headaches. For example, the flash button is too close to the bracketing button, so from time to time you will probably press one instead of the another. The top display is nice and usable, but not user friendly, the symbols are strange and without the manual you can't find what you are looking for, at least if your last DSLR was a Canon.
Another problem is that quick ISO unavailable if in manual mode, well some will say that you can set it on Fn button but it is not the same.
I will add that this model does have an internal AF motor so it has a body switch for that and in the exact same place it has a small button that is used to set the focus, difficult to find, but once you figured it out you realize that it is in the right place and can be easily used.
Though they seemed to be thinking at everything when designing the body, it is still difficult to actually change the settings without getting it off the eye.
Beside the design issues, it also it has some annoying limitations.
Bracketing, which has maximum 3 steps and it is rather difficult to get more exposures without using custom user settings.
They also changed something in the mount so older lens will not work in live view (lens that work perfectly with D90 for example), so you will need an upgrade to your lens. Some will do it for free - some will not, for my Sigma, they did it for free and works fine now.
Another issue with the mount is that it does not seem to fit some lenses very well. For example, my 50mm AF-D doesn't fit very smoothly. I am not sure if it is a problem with d7000 or happens to other Nikon bodies as well. What I know is that it never happened with Canon body and lenses.
Yet another limitation is the lack of in camera HDR. Even the d5100, the lower model camera, has it. You can overlap 2 images with D7000, but not HDR.
Another issue is that it doesn't have an articulated screen, which is very useful for movie and for macro photography,
The issues I presented above are some of the things I found to be limitations and not necessary problems. I can easily adapt to these because they do not actually have any influence on the pictures I am going to take.
Now let's go on to the problems.
Auto white balance in bright day light doesn't work most of the time, so I need to shoot RAWs and fiddle with them later in Photoshop. However, if I transfer the pictures directly with the card (not using the cable) some of the RAW's did not take the settings from the camera and were all blacks, fixable but annoying.
Regarding colors, in "Standard" settings the colors do not appear natural. For more realistic colors you need to use "Neutral" mode or make your own custom mode, a lot of unnecessary extra work. They could have done it right from the start.
Another problem I saw is that the exposure in bright day light it doesn't work that great, even a newbie will observe issues with the exposure - even in natural light and auto modes.
The focus assist light randomly works. Even when you explicitly set it not to flash it will still do most of the time, and the other way around too. Maybe I don't know how to use it, but it is a menu entry, show or not, how hard can or should it be. Also the continuous AF is a joke, it doesn't really work, a 200euro video camera will do better job.
One might say that even with these problems you can forget about auto and use manual settings everywhere and you are set, thinking you can still get great pictures and even good movies. Unfortunately, it is not so because the AF is not that accurate.
From Ken Rockwells review of the D7000, relating to the AF offsets: "Don't mess with this unless you are an expert, not just somebody shooting diagonal rulers.".
Ken Rockwell is a great guy that spends his time to helping the rest of us get the most for our money, but on this point I do not agree with him.
One doesn't need to be an expert to detect a poorly focused picture. It is as easy as the manual says, just add the offset minus or plus and check if your image is better and is sharper. If it is then you have a problem with your camera or with your lens, however if all your lenses need the same offset, and the same lenses work well on other bodies then you probably have a problem with the camera body.
Especially when you use your newly purchased Nikkor prime, like I did, and you still get poor results - then there is a big chance it is your camera's AF that sucks. I can say it happened to me twice with 2 different bodies.
Some will say this is pixel peeping and is not important for real photography - I will tell them that when you pay 1000e it does matter that you get the most value from your money.
From where I stand, it is not acceptable to get a top rated camera body and needing to use MF to get sharp images. Not in 2011, maybe 30 years ago it was normal but not acceptable today. The 3rd time they replaced the body, it seems they got it right. The new camera they sent seems to focus fine, but why did I need to change 2 bodies and waste a lot of my time to get what I payed for?
Just for the sake of discussion I will add these 2 pictures I used to test the second body. First you can see the normal version without AF micro adjustment. On the bottom you can see the shot taken with -10. They are both crops and they are both taken from a tripod from 1m distance using a new Nikkor 35mm at f4, 1/60 shutter speed with direct flash, single point focus on the blue eye.
I might be a newbie, but even I can clearly see the difference. There is an offset of almost 20cm, I got the same results with other lenses as well.
So in conclusion as to why this camera sucks -
Is it because of the layout of the switches and buttons that are not intuitive and misplaced to the new D7000 user?
Is it because of the unnecessary limitations that a lot of us do not understand?
Is it because of its bad white balance, poor exposure, poor colors or the really bad focus?
No, I don't think it is any one of these. They only add to the conclusion.
What makes it suck is Nikon is lack of QUALITY CONTROL. Perhaps tighter control before sending these camera bodies out to be sold, better testing for the firmware, better service responses and maybe a bit less profit would have made this camera the good value for the money. However, after 2 bad bodies, I can't recommend this camera to anyone. It‘s too bad because of the great sensor it has, one of the best in the market. I didn't test d5100, however, it apparently has the same sensor same image quality and it is a lot less expensive, so at least if it comes with some of the same design problems - it would cost you less and makes your money worth much more.