A few months ago, I purchased a Nikon D7000 DSLR. It was something of a surprise purchase in that I went out to buy a Nikon D5100. I went to the camera store with money in my pocket fully intending to just buy a D5100 and then bring it home.

Once at the camera store, however, I started to have second thoughts. That’s not to say that the D5100 isn’t a great camera. I think it is. And all the reports I’ve heard and the reviews I’ve read recommend it highly. It takes great pictures, is quite small and light, and has a swivel screen. It seemed the perfect upgrade from my D40X.

The problem, once I was holding a D5100 in my hands, was what I felt was a disconnect between the build quality of the camera and its price. Perhaps I’m behind the times, but when I plunk down $850, I expect to get something very substantial. I’ve hardly ever spent that much for anything in my life (other than for flights). In fact, I think I’ve only spent that much money once before in my life and that was for a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED. And that scanner is a serious chunk of well-built technology.

The D5100, for all its ability to produce great images, felt toy-like in my hands. It was so light and the buttons, wheels, and controls felt so plasticy, that I couldn’t justify spending $850 on it. As I said, perhaps I’m out of touch with prices, but for that much money, I expect something much more solid. I asked the clerk at the camera store if I could check out the Nikon D7000 sitting beside the D5100. As soon as I picked it up, I could feel the difference. THIS was a well-built piece of technology. The feel of the body and the controls was miles ahead of the D5100. Everything felt solid. The buttons and controls were crisp and hard with a good feel. There was none of the looseness and clicky/plasticy feel that the D5100 had. The D7000 was significantly more expensive than the D5100, but I at least felt like I was getting something of value for my money. Before I could change my mind, I bought the camera (the kit with the 18-105 lens) and took it home.

Buyers remorse is a fact of life for me, and because of the high purchase price of the D7000 and its greater weight, I doubted I’d made the right choice for a long time. For weeks, I had to go over my reasons for purchasing the D7000 to reassure myself that I hadn’t made a mistake. While out walking around with my camera, I’d pop into a camera store just to pick up a D5100 and remind myself of its toy-like feel and ergonomics. I also looked through its viewfinder to remind myself how superior the viewfinder of the D7000 was – much larger and much brighter.

In the end, my buyer’s remorse faded and I came to love my D7000. I appreciate things that are well-built and I feel a little burst of pleasure every time I pick up the D7000. It’s a beautiful piece of technology. I remember walking around Taipei not that long ago taking pictures when I came across a group of people taking pictures of themselves outside a restaurant. They asked me if I could take a picture of their group and they handed me their camera – a Canon EOS 600D (also called a T3i). This camera is also a great camera and probably the closet Canon competitor for Nikon’s D5100. I put down my D7000 and picked up the 600D and how light it was almost blew my mind. It felt like there was nothing there. The buttons also felt very creaky with a lot of play. And when I took the pictures, I heard a distinct “ping” sound, like a rusty spring inside the camera had fired, and I could feel the vibration of the camera body as the shutter flipped up and down. When I picked up the D7000 after that, I could really feel the difference in the solid build quality and the precision of the controls and the effortless and nearly inaudible little “schnick” of the shutter firing. It was a bare whisper with no vibration at all. Buttery smooth. Again, I want to say that the 600D is a great camera. For $800, it had better be. It’s just that for that much money, I’d like to get a bit more in the way of build quality.

I’ve been using the D7000 for a few months now. I picked up two Nikon prime lenses to go with it – the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G and the AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G. They’re both great lenses and neither is very expensive. I tended to use mostly these two lenses for a while. It’s only recently that I’ve gotten a lot of use out of the 18-105 kit lens. This lens (probably because it’s a kit lens) has come in for a fair bit of abuse online. However, I have no complaints about it. I think it produces awesome pictures and it has exceptional build quality. People diss the plastic mount on this lens, but I don’t know if that is a problem or not. It hasn’t been for me.

I do find that I don’t use the full 18-105 range very much. The lens pretty much sits at the 18mm focal length the entire time. So the zoom part of the lens is of no use to me. The problem for Nikon’s DX line of camera equipment is that there are no wide-angle prime lenses. I have no idea why this is the case. There must be something very technically challenging about engineering such a lens. Many people have lamented online the lack of a wide-angle prime DX lens, and I KNOW that if Nikon made such a lens, it would be an instant huge seller. Everyone would snap one up. I’d sell my 18-105 and pick up an 18mm prime in a heartbeat if there was one. (Assuming it didn’t cost an arm and a leg – which it probably would.) I’d also love to see a super-wide prime – something in the 10-12mm range. Nikon makes a very good (and somewhat expensive) 10-24mm zoom and that is one option for me. The other (perhaps more appealing option) is the Tokina 11-16mm zoom. I’m still eyeing that lens as a replacement for my 18-105. I haven’t pulled the trigger on that lens because I have no experience with a super-wide. I might find the field of view to be more than I bargained for. I like a dramatically wide field of view, but I want to stop short of fish-eye.

The Nikon D7000 offers a lot of pro (or maybe you would call them semi-pro) features that I haven’t used much or at all. For example, it has a dual card slot. You can insert two memory cards and use them in different ways – as memory overflow, as backup, as storage for different types of file formats (Raw on one, JPEG on the other). I can see that being handy, but it isn’t an essential feature for me. It also has two customizable settings on the mode dial. With these, you can program in your own favorite set of settings for certain conditions. At the moment, I’m not skilled enough to even be able to create custom settings that I need beyond the standard ones that the camera already offers. I probably never will be. Still, I might find those customizable modes useful one day. I’m sure there are a wealth of other features in the camera that I haven’t uncovered yet.

The camera appeals to me now for the same reasons that it did when I bought it – great ergonomics, big and bright viewfinder, lots of button controls (rather than having to use the menu to change settings), solid build quality, and, of course, the ability to produce great images. I have had one problem with the camera, and for that reason, I’m sending the camera in for a checkup at Nikon soon. I’ve found that occasionally, the LCD screen will simply not work. I’ll be out walking around and taking pictures and suddenly, the image won’t appear on the LCD screen. And nothing happens when I press the play button. This seems to happen only on hot days. My guess is that the camera is getting too hot and this is affecting the LCD screen somehow. This overheating is exacerbated by how I constantly hold the camera in my hand with my fingers wrapped around the grip. The camera might stay there in my hand for an hour or two at a time. I don’t hang the camera around my neck on a strap where it might have a chance to cool off.

This might be perfectly normal for a modern DSLR, but I’m not sure. So I went to the camera store where I bought it and asked them. They suggested that since the camera was still under warranty, I should send it in to Nikon to get it checked. I’ll be doing that this week. Hopefully, Nikon will be able to locate the problem. If not, I guess I’ll just have to be careful to keep the camera as cool as possible while out on hot and sunny days. I’m using the camera in Taiwan during the summer, by the way, so we are talking about some extremely hot and humid conditions.

Tags: D7000, DSLR, ED, LCD, LCD screen, menu, Nikon, Nikon D5100, Nikon D7000