I’m a switcher. Having been a Canon shooter for the past 8 years, I’m making the switch to Nikon, primarily due to Nikon’s advantage in the high-ISO, low-noise realm which is important to me since I shoot a lot of events in marginal lighting conditions (think dimly-lit hotel conference rooms).
Having used my first Nikon gear (D7000 body, 17-55 f/2.8 lens) for about 24 hours, here are my first impressions based on that gear and what I’ve seen… this is pretty much a brain dump in no particular order:
- Nikon’s lens hoods are quite a bit more sturdy than Canon’s.
- The high-ISO performance is amazing. ISO 6400 on the D7000 is quite usable as-is for any sort of web use.
- The little rubber flap on the bottom of the D7000 that allows for a power cable to plug into the battery compartment keeps coming open via normal use of the camera. This is going to bug me and seems to be a design flaw of the camera.
- I read the manual last night and went shooting today at the zoo. Only once did I get stumped where I couldn’t figure something out on the camera… I wanted to change the number of focus points in use and couldn’t remember where to find that. Came home, looked at the manual, and thought “Oh, duh, the AF mode button.”
- Speaking of buttons, on my Canon body the usual MO for adjusting a setting was to a) tap a button then b) move a dial. With Nikon, instead of tapping a button it’s tapping and holding that button. I’m not sure if it’s better or worse, but it’s something to get used to.
- And speaking of dials, just as I knew ahead of time, everything is backwards. The zoom rings move in the opposite directions, the lens mounts in a different direction, heck even the exposure values use a weird “left is positive” X-axis. Some of this can be changed via camera custom settings; I’m trying to decide if I should reverse some of the backwardsness or just learn “the Nikon way.”
- Nikon includes a screen protector/cover to cover the back-of-camera display; Canon does not. I never felt concerned about breaking my display on my previous bodies but it’s a nice touch. From what I can tell it doesn’t negatively impact viewability at all.
Overall I’m happy. Other than the little rubber flap near the battery cover, I’m pretty sure any of my issues are simply me needing to get used to something new. The camera and lens performed quite well today with great results.
