Nikon D7000

I've had my Nikon D7000 for about 2 weeks now and absolutely love it! I bought it from Jessops on their 0% finance deal because I was impatient!

The D7000 is so easy to use. My previous DSLR was a Nikon D60 but I was able to take the camera out the box and know how to use it straight away.

One massive bonus to the D7000 that I'm looking forward to playing with is Bracketing. This option isn't available on some cameras and can be rather time consuming, but being able to do this on the camera automatically is a big help.

It has a number of SCENE modes like what you would find on most cameras, such as, Pet mode, Sports mode, Night scene and Snow just to name a few.

The camera has a bit of weight to it - not too much that it feels like a brick but enough to know that if it took a knock, or if you dropped it, it wouldn't shatter into a million pieces!

What I love most, which is a new feature, is that it now comes with 2 memory card slots, so its possible to have thousands of images stored within your camera. It is also not only suitable for SDHC cards but is also designed to accept the new SDXC memory cards.

It's very simple to switch between standard viewfinder mode and the live view mode, which is particularly useful in videoing. It's a great little feature for those who don't like to look through the viewfinder, and the pictures look great through the large LCD screen.

Filming is very easy to do on the D7000. Simply switch to Live View mode and hit the recording button and you're away! If you half press the shutter release it will also auto focus to where you want to look, rather than having to manually change the focus yourself. The only downside I have had with this is that you can hear the camera autofocusing on your video file, which maybe fine if you're in a particularly noisy environment.

The camera also has a selection of other modes to switch between such as continuous release where the camera will take a series of pictures in one go, remote shutter mode, where you can release the shutter with a wireless remote, and my favourite which is Quiet mode. This simply makes the shutter release quieter. The camera isn't even that noisy at taking pictures but it's cool how quiet it can go.

I paid just over £1000 for my D7000, and it was just before the VAT increase, even though Jessops are freezing their VAT until the end of January 2011, and I feel that perhaps that the price is a bit much considering it was the body only, but I don't regret not waiting. It's such a great camera and I want to take it with me everywhere.