Need help for Nikon D7000 vs Canon EOS 7D

mosswings wrote:

Mako, Evan, Ando, Barry, let's just give this a rest, please. There have been a lot of posts on this forum about apparent D7000 AF issues, and a rather high percentage of them have been Barry jumping in about his experiences and others jumping in to shout him down. Barry's case does seem very unusual.

To the OP - if you're still listening - you are trying to choose between two cameras that, with proper training, will give you excellent image quality and will respond very well to your commands. Nikon does some things better than Canon, and vice-versa - but the overall packages are more similar than different. Ultimately, it boils down to whether you see more value in the features of one system over the other - lenses, flashes, etc., and whether or not the tool feels comfortable in your hand over a day's (or decade's) use. I would argue that if you are budget limited, you will get more value out of a good lens and a medium-performance camera body than a mediocre lens and a high-performance body; given the quality of the imaging chain in today's cameras, what you are giving up in the lower-end body is not IQ, but just the ability to interact fully and rapidly with the tool that takes your pictures. Many folks on this forum have found that, as wonderful as the D7000 may be, its little brother the D5100 takes just as good pictures, and isn't as limiting as one might think. Remember that's it's not just the camera that you're buying; there is a whole universe of accessories that you need to get as well to extract the maximum out of it; batteries, memory cards, cleaning supplies, post-processing software and the computer and monitor for it, camera bags, and perhaps the most important accessory of all, the books and workshops that will teach you how to extract the best out of your camera and how to effectively tell others the stories you want to tell through your photos.