Which brings me to the camera itself. If you've been following the critical serious consumer DSLR model from the beginning, you'll know that Nikon has slowly added performance and features. The D70/D70s to D80 to D90 to D7000 progression hasn't changed the basic body size and style, the price point, or the base feature set. But each iteration has been pushing up the image quality, performance, and slowly added some of the pro-level feature set.
Thus, it won't surprise you find that the D7000 and D90 sat next to one another look remarkably the same. Casual inspection from the front won't reveal any tangible changes to most people (though there are some). Even careful inspection of the back reveals only some modest changes in buttons and something new sitting under the Mode dial. It sure looks and feels D90-replacement to me.
But what a replacement. Nikon appears to have decided to defend the high-end consumer DSLR camera with everything they've got. The changes inside the camera are massive, and make for a far better camera than I think most people expected at this price point.
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Coupled with the new focus system is a new metering sensor in the viewfinder area. This new 2016-pixel part does color discrimination that integrates into the Auto Area and 3D Tracking aspects of the focus system. The focus system itself is controlled in a new way. Instead of extra buttons and switches on the top and back of the camera, the Autofocus mode lever next to the lens (labeled AF and M; used to be S, C, and M on high-end cameras) now has a button in the middle of it. Press that button and the Front Command dial controls the Autofocus Area mode and the back button controls the Autofocus mode (yes, I know Nikon uses the words "focus" and "mode" in seriously confusing ways with different functions all having labels that look the same until you read the words really carefully; it's one reason why my books sell so well, as I explain the differences clearly and precisely ;~).
The viewfinder that you're looking through to see the focus system settings (yes, you can change focus settings without taking your eye from the viewfinder--hurray!), is now 100% view, which is nice. It's still a little lacking in some information, like the D90 was, but you get used to that.
Three very useful additions come to the D7000 from the higher-level bodies and set the D7000 even further above the D90: AF Fine tune, Non-CPU Lens Data, and Intervalometer. Bravo. Those of you with older manual focus Nikkors (AI or AI-S only) will find that they work with the meter in the D7000; those of you with exotic long lenses will be able to tweak the camera/lens combination to its fullest; and Intervalometer makes for an interesting addition for all those video freaks using the D7000 (allows you to take frames for a time-lapse video). Very nice, Nikon. And overdue.
Overall, a lot of significant feature updates, many of which move the D7000 to the top of the DX camera ladder.
Which brings me to the D300s. I've noted a lot of people getting confused by the fact that the D300s now seems to be lagging in some areas of performance to the D7000, thus they believe it can't be considered the top DX camera any more. Given that the D300s is really a three-year old camera (the s revision really was a very modest mid-life tweak), it's to be expected that the sensor and image processing will be a generation behind the D7000.
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Autofocus System
Surprise, surprise. This autofocus system is quite good (at least in normal shooting). It feels responsive, does well in low light (but not exceptionally well), and covers a nice wide area of the frame. Coupled with the new method of making autofocus settings, you should be able to get excellent performance in almost any condition with the mirror down. In basketball sessions, it did a very good job of following action, perhaps slightly better than the D300s, but definitely not quite up to the level of my D3s. But anyone up to a D90 user will be blown away with this new system, so it's a big win here. I've seen reports from others about being disappointed with active autofocus use, such as with birds in flight (BIF). I haven't been able to duplicate their problems, though I will note that you may need to adjust your settings if you're coming from another high-end camera. I found my optimal BIF settings for the D7000 to be slightly different than for my D300s.
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