Viewfinder, live view, LCD and video
Despite the prevalence of Live View and electronic viewfinders, a good optical viewfinder will always be the preference of enthusiast and professional photographers alike. Thankfully, the viewfinder of the D7000 doesn’t disappoint. It is large and bright, with a 0.94x magnification. Even better, it offers a 100% field of view.
As expected, the D7000 uses a 3in, 920,000-dot LCD screen, which is bright and clear with a good level of colour and contrast. Having tested a few cameras with articulated screens recently, I have to say that I did miss the option to rotate the screen when taking low-angle images. In this regard, the recently tested Canon EOS 60D (AP 23 October) has an advantage. It still seems that Nikon does not view articulated screens as a feature that enthusiast or professional photographers would use.
That said, the screen has a very high angle of view, making it just about possible to compose images when holding the camera at very low angles. Switching to Live View is now made easier thanks to a dedicated switch on the rear of the camera. At the centre of this switch is a direct video-capture button. A press of this button when in Live View mode starts and stops video capture, regardless of which modes the camera is set to.
Sadly, with the mono microphone positioned at the front of the camera, the sound of the lens zooming and autofocusing is recorded. Thankfully, there is an external microphone jack on the side of the camera, which will be vital for anybody wishing to record ambient sound with their video footage.The quality of the actual video footage is good, with no significant sign of the ‘wobble’ that the D90 suffered from. This is great news for Nikon users wishing to shoot video.
