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And by that I mean another new Nikon has broken cover.

For US$1200, line up for the D7000.

And there will be queues.

I just had a closer look at the specs, and I am wondering why anyone would buy a D300 class camera now?

Which makes you wonder what the D300 replacement is going to be like.

hello boys .... this is actually looking like a real possible upgrade path for me now - I am really liking the sounds of the larger body size (but smaller than the D300) and more importantly the older lens compatibility is there, woot! can't wait to see some more info on it

This is a great offering! That ISO is very tantalising for that price. Can't wait for the sample images.

Hey Gerry, What exact features would you be getting over your current camera? [that couldn't do without ]

Yep gerry, this means the end of the line for a few D80's me thinks.

Announcement Nikon - http://nikon.com/about/news/2010/0915_d7000_02.htm

Previewed at DPReview - http://dpreview.com/news/1009/10091515nikond7000.asp

Chase Jarvis has a play - http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2010/09/nikon-d7000/

Just hope they are instore before 20 October when I head off to Okavango Delta Heres hoping.

surenj wrote:Hey Gerry, What exact features would you be getting over your current camera? [that couldn't do without ]

well really, I can and do, make do perfectly fine with my D80, hence why I have not upgraded to teh D90 or D300.

However in terms of features over teh D80 for me;

1) Size, slightly bigger body than what I have, but not as big as the D300. I want, and like some form of compactness
2) better build quality, mag-alloy shell
3) lens compatibility, I have a number of older lens, 105, 105 macro, 100-300 which would be more of a pleasure to use on a d300 or equiv higher end body.
4) iso - big draw card here over teh D80 and I am assuming that the iso is gonna be good...
5) 100% viewfinder coverage...nioce!

the only downer at this point is teh shutter button (for me) it looks the same as the D300 one, I quite like teh feel of teh D80 one and the D300 one blows imo.

more pixels ..meh.. thats a downside

14 bit raw...ringa ding ding...not really that important for me..but a nice feature...

Assuming the higher end iso performance is good, I think this is definate upgrade for me from the D200. Especially with the $AUD around 95 cents

gstark wrote:I just had a closer look at the specs, and I am wondering why anyone would buy a D300 class camera now?

Which makes you wonder what the D300 replacement is going to be like.

I hope the D?00 specs get announced soon because i think i want one of these new little ones. Be a shame to rush in if something DX format even more amazing is just around the corner...

Oh, and there be new glass in them thar hills too, maties.

AF-S 35mm f/1.4 G - mid November 2010

And ...

AF-S NIKKOR 200mm f/2G ED VR II - Early October.

As I said, there will be queues.

Should I omit mentioning the Speedlight SB-700?

Nikon's press release wrote:Smaller than the SB-600, the multi-functional SB-700 is much easier to use especially for beginners. As a result, the SB-700 is able to respond to the wide-ranging needs of Nikon digital-SLR camera users, who not only possess a broad range of skills, but also seek to increase their individual power of expression through photographs that truly accentuate light.

Yeah, who cares about that?

In all honesty, with this group of toys, plus the D3100 and new 85mm lens, Nikon seem to finally be coming back on track. This can only be good for all of us, because Canon will need to pull something out of their hats.

gstark wrote:Canon will need to pull something out of their hats.

You mean you were not impressed with the barcode scanner? Apparently you can scan your own products at the supermarket and by pass the checkout....

Maybe you want them to pull out a coffee maker?

Another Preview: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/D7000/D7000A.HTM

Personally, I think Nikon don't do a very good job of changing things.

I mean lens wise, what are they doing? Adding VRII to things. WOOOOO! I mean, VRI was more than good enough, but lets call it VRII and charge more. Their line up hasnt really changed all that much in ages. The 35mm 1.4 sound nice, but not exactly a huge leap forward. They even reworked the 24-120.

They need to sit back and look at what is actually needed, not just whatever they can update. Maybe a nikon 120-300 2.8 with VRII would be pretty....

WOW...there you go we now have the four announcements slated for Sept 15th.....now I wonder if we will get the one more just before Photokina.....

35 f/1.4 looks sexy....now I am seriously itching for a prime kit....24/35/85 all at f/1.4

That D7000 is even better than I thought it would be....something tells me that Canon will be in trouble....60D loses build and weatherproofing but the D7000 gains both these, and a 39pt AF and a 2016-pixel RGB meter!!! I dont buy that the D90 will see another upgrade/replacement to have this remain inbetween the D90 and the D300s.

I cant wait to see what the D400 and D800 bring when they arrive!

aim54x wrote:35 f/1.4 looks sexy....now I am seriously itching for a prime kit....24/35/85 all at f/1.4

These are the missing gems from the Nikon line up. You should also add the 135....

I wish I could swap out my D200 for one of this for Antarctica, but I think I might be eating through a straw (if I'm still alive) if I proposed a new body along with the 70-200VRII I'm hopefully gettin in the next few weeks.

I'm definitely impressed by this body, do we know for sure if the D7000 has a Nikon sensor or a Sony one ?


Edit: word on the street is while release is October, AUS won't see stock until early November so its too close to the trip (plus I'd need another chanrge, batteries and SD cards so it not entirely convenient).

Now that 35mm F1.4 I could use, so long as it's FX.

surenj wrote:

aim54x wrote:35 f/1.4 looks sexy....now I am seriously itching for a prime kit....24/35/85 all at f/1.4

These are the missing gems from the Nikon line up. You should also add the 135....

Missing no longer!!!! The 24/35/50/85 are all present and accounted for now (well available to buy) and yes I would love to add a 135mm f/1.8 and a 200 f/2.8 to the kit.....but the above kit will be deadly enough to my resources as they are already.

Ideally I would go 24 1.4/35 1.4/85 1.4/135 1.8/200 2.8 on FX, in life I have 35 1.8 DX/50 1.8/60 2.8 Micro/135 2.8/180 3.5 Macro

Killakoala wrote:Now that 35mm F1.4 I could use, so long as it's FX.

It is.

Alan,

Raskill wrote:Personally, I think Nikon don't do a very good job of changing things.

I dunno.

These two new bodies are both very compelling within their market sectors. I was looking at the D3200 specs a couple of weeks ago and asking why would you buy any other body within that sector, and then the D7000 announcement comes along, and blows - I think - every other DX bodied Nikon out of the game.

Now that's based entirely upon reading the specs, but in all honesty, I cannot understand why, from reading those specs, anyone might consider a D300s instead of a D7000.

Further, anyone with a body less than a D300 that's more than maybe two years old and thinking of upgrading must be looking at the D700 and thinking quite seriously ... or looking at the D3100 as a second body.

I mean lens wise, what are they doing? Adding VRII to things. WOOOOO! I mean, VRI was more than good enough, but lets call it VRII and charge more.

Perhaps. But the extra stop must be worth something, and besides, I am looking more and more at have a full prime kit. Faster, lighter, better image quality. And Nikon now has the makings of that, with modern, fast, sharp glass.

You mention pricing; While yes, the prices have increased. Significantly in a couple of cases. I'm not going to defend Nikon Australia's pricing regime, but my understanding is that that is foistered upon them by Singapore. Rather, let's just talk generally. To be honest, when I started shooting with Nikon, even the second string glass - 50mm f/1.8 Series E was around $400-$500, IIRC. Note that this was a series E lens, the first of their plastic bodied lenses.

Now, we're talking well over 30 years ago, when salaries were a lot lower, and the purchase of truly fast glass almost required a second mortgage!

Overall, and in real terms, pricing has not really been much cheaper than it is today, and especially if you look at pricing in other markets, which, today, are readily accessible to us. 30 years ago we were mostly unaware of other markets' pricing, and they were largely unavailable, unless you took a trip somewhere.

Gary, all,
I believe that the AF-S 35mm f/1.4 will cost around $2300 US. You can buy Zeiss, Hasselblad and Leica lenses for that money. Nikon have to be dreaming!

Matt. K wrote:Gary, all,
I believe that the AF-S 35mm f/1.4 will cost around $2300 US. You can buy Zeiss, Hasselblad and Leica lenses for that money. Nikon have to be dreaming!

That sort of pricing does sound right....and unfortunately you could buy zeiss, blad and leica lenses for that money, but will these fit on a Nikon F-mount and autofocus? They will settle to be about the same as the equivalent canon L lenses so I dont think too many people will be too shocked by the pricing.

But bringing out new camera bodies is what they are meant to do, new lenses, with some amount of innovation, like what we see from third party manufacturers is important also.

Also, VRII, giving you an extra stop, is all well and good, but I get more out of improved high ISO capabilities, allowing me to pump up shutter speeds if required that I do out of a $3000 lens. I mean, I've gone from trying to avoid shooting at ISO 800 or above on my D2 bodies (now retired for stunt work only), to trying to avoid shooting 6400 ISO on the D700's. That surely outweighs the advantage of the extra stop from VRII.

I dunno, I just thik sometimes Nikon could do better.

Personally, if I had one DX camera body, and was looking to upgrade I would keep it as a DX body. Having a combination of FX and DX is a pain in the ass. I did it for a short time, and bought another D700 to do away with the issue.

I've been holding off on my D300s purchase for quite some time as my D200 only gets stretched on a few occasions.
So this new D7000 had some serious analysis from me.
We're all going to have our own requirements, but I started thinking about the features that I wanted that make the D7000 a deal breaker.
I need the faster shutter speed of 8FPS. I do a lot of human reaction work with sports and with a the average reaction time exceeding a fifth of a second, I miss things running the fastest frame rate. 8FPS will cut it. 6 won't.

I find myself constantly changing back and forth between single and continuous focus. The D7000 doesn't have a dedicated switch as far as I can see. I also curse the limited focal points, so I want them as much as possible.
I also switch back and forth across the different focus modes quite regularly. Lack of a dedicated switch is going to annoy the hell out of me.
Video capabilities.. well, they're less with the D300s, but if I should ever go back to doing dedicated video work, I'd be taking out a bank loan to kit up again. 720p is surprisingly good for what I'm likely to want to do.
I also find that I use the cable release a reasonable amount and I also do a lot of remote triggering. I'd rather be able to use all the gear I've collected.
Maybe a D400 would keep the dual cards, better video capabilities and have the dedicated buttons that I want.
At the moment, the D300s still has a lot of good things going for it. The only option I'd prefer is a D3x at this point in time.

whiz wrote:I find myself constantly changing back and forth between single and continuous focus.

 AFAIK, they have just moved the switch but its still available just repositioned. (I read this in on of the recent reviews, haven't seen one for myself obviously).

I've just been looking at the dpreview shots of it and I can't find a dedicated switch.
They've also made the metering zone selection a button rather than a selector switch. This means that it will have to be a hold / scroll function or a step through.
Hmmm. Not keen on that at all, as I'm constantly swapping them around as well.

It also looks like the Depth of Field preview button may have been changed to lower and further forward.
I also use that quite a bit.
The top one is now labled Fn. I suppose that you COULD reprogram the function button to do DOF.. but then you lose the easy to get to other one.

I think that a D300s will still let me get to everything faster. A meld of a D7000 with a D300s would get me a lot more interested, but I think that accessibility is looking particularly like a backwards step at the moment, unless someone can tell me otherwise.
Then again, it's not designed to exceed the D300s at this point, just narrow the gap. Maybe this means that there's a D400 that will step up that fraction more under the horizon at the moment?

That will be nice, but I'm definitely going with a second body at some point. One things for sure, each time a new camera turns up to claim the top spot, the previous top spot gets a LOT cheaper.

whiz wrote:I've been holding off on my D300s purchase for quite some time as my D200 only gets stretched on a few occasions.

started thinking about the features that I wanted that make the D7000 a deal breaker.

I need the faster shutter speed of 8FPS. I do a lot of human reaction work with sports and with a the average reaction time exceeding a fifth of a second, I miss things running the fastest frame rate. 8FPS will cut it. 6 won't.

Interesting post.

I'd just like to understand your lines of thought here.

You're still using a D200?

You've held off buying a D300s because you rarely stretch the D200?

You feel you need 8FPS, rather than 6FPS, but yet you've held off buying a D300s although on the D200 (which is rarely stretched) the maximum you can achieve is just 5fps ...

I can't help but feel that I'm missing something ...

Hmm. I probably haven't explained that very well.
Yes, I'm still using the D200.

In terms of being stretched, I'd say that for 85 percent of the time, I'm not being limited by the camera.
However, most of my type of photography is outdoor sports related where I can make some settings and choices which will cover most of the conditions as they don't change drastically.

Lately, I've been cajoled into doing modelling portfolios, weddings and stills for movie production. All of a sudden, I've found that my requirements have become considerably more dynamic in terms of light changes, power requirements, working distances and what I am trying to achieve in limited time. In trade offs between being paid for capturing things and being able to capture images to display what want, I'm finally tipping the economic balance towards a new body.
My periods of flexible expenditure have been severely curtailed for the last two years due to changing job roles in the real world but that's about to change again.

I've had a while to consider where the balance point lies between a new body investment, type of work, loss of potential capability and picture quality.

I knew absolutely what I wanted a month ago and have been shopping for the last two weeks. All of a sudden a new arrival upsets the apple cart but luckily, it's not going to be a deal stopper if I don't buy a new camera for the next few months. I might wait a bit longer as this new one seems to have been carefully engineered to position it just below the D300s in the current line up in everything but image quality.

Does that make more sense?

And with the speed changes, quite often I'm finding that the 1/20th of a second frames show that the learnt reaction triggering sequence has started in one frame, but as the average reaction time of a human is between 15 to 18/100ths of a second, I don't get the action I'm after. A faster frame rate would cross that reaction boundary time and give me a few more slices at the pie before it all gets going.

That makes much more sense.

Thanks for clarifying it; I'm easily consufed.

some ISO sample images here;

http://www.naturapics.com/809-sample-iso-du-nikon-d7000.html

beats the hell outta my D80

Pixel peeping is very interesting.

biggerry wrote:some ISO sample images here;

http://www.naturapics.com/809-sample-iso-du-nikon-d7000.html

beats the hell outta my D80

Thyanks for the link. Im really intrested in the higher ISO performance

I must say.. the D7000 camera is a bloody ripper the only accessory... *note heavily not camera* that I personally see unforgiving is the MB-D11 using EN-EL15... P100 coolpix batteries.. well.. So i've been told. if this is the case.. YUCKY! but love love love the D7000 also note.. recently bought the girlfriend a D3000 for her graduation.. let's just say.. I'll be running both systems by the end of next year

photomarcs wrote:I must say.. the D7000 camera is a bloody ripper the only accessory... *note heavily not camera* that I personally see unforgiving is the MB-D11 using EN-EL15... P100 coolpix batteries.. well.. So i've been told. if this is the case.. YUCKY! but love love love the D7000 also note.. recently bought the girlfriend a D3000 for her graduation.. let's just say.. I'll be running both systems by the end of next year

EN-EL15 is not the battery from the P100....the P100 uses the EN-EL5. The EN-EL15 looks like a EN-EL3e (or BP-511) in shape whereas the EN-EL5 is a phone battery type shape.

http://www.nikon.com.au/productitem.php?pid=1392-4071a78296
http://www.nikon.com.au/productitem.php?pid=263-eaab7ab940

Honest mistake though, easy to miss the "1" and read it as EN-EL5

D7000 is now in stock at Digital Rev

http://www.digitalrev.com/en/nikon-d7000-dslr-body-lens-kits-value-packs

AU$1,579.99

and a hands on review/preview

http://www.digitalrev.com/en/nikon-d7000-hands-on-review-7048-article

The D7000 has finally landed and our presenter, Kai W, has been fondling the camera lovingly. So, what's new about this successor to the D90? We've all seen the specs sheet, and it looks pretty good even when compared to the D300S and other such cameras like the Canon 7D and Pentax K-5. But what is it really like to use? Find out in this review.

That Kai is hilarious! Not heaps of info on most of his reviewes but I love to watch it. It's like a photography comedy... Loved his 550D vs 1DMK3 comparison! [His flash had no batteries and at one point got dislodged from the 1D and fell on the ground!]

had a look at the review of the d7000, i can't help but say I like it, but not enough to want to go buy it....not sure why. Wanting a second body, the price is good, but there's some things I love like the ISO but can't say for certain i want to pay all the more for it instead of picking up a d300 or d200 for a cheaper price (well i expect they will drop now this is released).

Can't wait for someone on here to get a d7000 and fill us all in and show us some pics at the higher iso.

I recently watched the comparison with the Canon 60D. I may just drop my 60D on the floor and make it real "Broken" and line up for the D7000

I just wanted to comment and say that the d7000 is mindblowingly good for its target range, the iso performance on a apsc sensor just wowed me, at first I was skeptical but still upgraded from a d90, and its definitely worth it