Introduction

Ease of Use

The Nikon Coolpix P7000 is thicker and heavier than the P6000 model that it replaces, now more closely resembling the popular Canon Powershot G-series in terms of both dimensions and weight. This means that it no longer fits completely in your palm or a trouser pocket, instead being much more at home stored in a capacious coat pocket or small shoulder bag. Still, given that the P7000 has increased the zoom to 7.1x with a focal range of 28-200mm, more versatile than both the P6000 and the Canon PowerShot G12, we're willing to forgive Nikon for the increase in size. It also still offers a realistic alternative to lugging around either a 'super zoom' bridge camera or actual DSLR without having to compromise on features or handling. As with its predecessor, the P7000 feels at once solidly constructed yet at the same time reasonably lightweight, with a magnesium alloy chassis and similarly high levels of build quality that you find on the company's DSLR range.

The front of the Nikon Coolpix P7000 features the aforementioned 7x zoom lens surrounded by a metal ring that can be unscrewed to allow for supplementary Nikon attachments such as wide angle or telephoto converters. The 200mm maximum telephoto setting is a key difference between the P7000 and the G12, bringing candid and detail shots within reach, while the 28mm wide-angle setting makes it easy to shoot subjects like buildings in narrow streets or a group of your friends in a confined space. The maximum apertures of f/2.8 at 28mm and f/5.6 at 200mm are also perfectly respectable and in keeping with the serious nature of the camera.

The P7000 has a couple of innovative optical features. It's equipped with a built-in neutral density (ND) filter, the first Coolpix model to offer this feature, which provides a three-stop decrease in the shutter speed, enabling you to use a slower shutter speed in bright surroundings and achieve exactly the creative effect that you want. The P7000 also offers a number of set focal lengths - 28, 35, 50, 85, 105, 135 and 200mm - with the new Zoom Memory function quickly switching to one of them, mimicking having a bag full of prime lenses.

Front	Rear

Nikon have also included their VR (Vibration Reduction) image stabilisation system to help prevent camera-shake, an increasingly de-facto feature on a lot of high-end compact cameras. Annoyingly there isn't a dedicated button to turn it on and off (it's somewhat buried in the Setup menu). In practice I found that the VR system makes a noticeable difference to the sharpness of the images, as shown in the examples on the Image Quality page. You don't notice that the camera is actually doing anything different when anti-shake is turned on, just that you can use slower shutter speeds than normal and still take sharp photos. It didn't seem to adversely affect the battery life either, so I'd advise you to turn it on and then forget about it.

When the Nikon P6000 was first announced, it's NRW RAW format implementation caused quite a stir. Nikon teamed up with Microsoft to use the Windows Imaging Component (WIC) codec in Windows Vista (also available for Windows XP SP2 via .NET). The key benefit of this approach was to allow the operating system to decode the RAW files, rather than third-party software, but obviously this opened Nikon up to charges of ignoring MAC users and generally being in cahoots with Microsoft. Now Nikon have introduced an enhanced version of the NRW file format, NRW+, which as you'd expect isn't yet supported by the third-party software vendors. You'll need to use the supplied ViewNX 2 software or buy Nikon's Capture NX2 to edit the P7000's RAW files on a computer (thankfully both are now MAC compatible).

Which sadly can't also be said about the negative effect that using RAW has on the P7000's responsiveness. Maximum resolution JPEGS are stored in a couple of seconds, but RAW format is a different story entirely, essentially locking up the camera for around 5 seconds until the file is written to memory. If you then quickly take a second shot, the write time gets even longer. This is frankly unacceptable on a prosumer camera, and severely limits the type of photography that you can attempt when shooting RAW files - I'd go so far to say that it may put you off shooting RAW altogether. Continuous shooting is also one of the P7000's weak points. It can only capture 1 frame per second when shooting Fine sized JPEGs, albeit for up to as many images as the memory card can hold. If you select the RAW file format, the camera shoots at 1 fps for up to 5 frames, and then takes around 15 seconds to write them to the memory card.

Bottom left of the lens is the new Fn button, just one of the ways in which the P7000 can be customised to suit your shooting style. One of six different settings can be mapped to this button - RAW, ISO, White Balance, Picture Control, D-Lighting and Metering - which therefore provides one-touch access to some of the more commonly used functions. Bottom-right of the lens is a small button for releasing the metal lens ring. Top-left are two single bulbs, one that doubles as a self timer plus AF assist lamp, and another that acts as an infra red receiver for use with the optional ML-L3 remote control.

Front	Front

Directly above the lens is the glass window for the optical viewfinder, something of a rarity on modern cameras. The viewfinder itself is small (just 80% scene coverage) and rather murky, and peer through it and you can spot visible barrel distortion at the lens' maximum wide angle setting, which appears slightly less pronounced on the LCD alternative. Some users may welcome the inclusion of the optical viewfinder, but I only really used it on the rare occasions that it was just too bright to see the LCD screen clearly. Directly right of this is the small built-in flash, which pops-up above the lens and therefore provides more clearance and less chance of unwanted red-eye in your photos. Completing the front of the P7000 is the hand-grip, which although not as big or as well-designed as the P6000's is nevertheless still nice to use, with a new rubberised coating and just enough room for three fingers.

Moving to the top of the P7000, Nikon's design team has implemented an initially complex but quickly second-nature system of not one, not two, but three circular dials. Starting on the left when viewed from behind, the first dial provides quick access to six commonly used functions - Quality, ISO, White Balance, Bracketing (including exposure, ISO sensitivity, and white balance), My Menu (which effectively allows you to register your favourite menu options and then quickly access them) and Intelligent Exposure. Simply set the dial to your desired option and press the small button in the middle to change it. To the right of this dial is a hot shoe for an optional Nikon Speedlight flashgun, expanding the P7000's flash capabilities. We found that the built-in flash unit was fine for a bit of fill-in, with respectably quick recycle times and adequate range.

The large shooting mode dial is again similar to what you'd find on a consumer-level DSLR. Ranged around this we find the usual suspects of Auto, Program Auto, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority and Manual, plus Movie mode, and Scene modes. There is also a Low Light mode which boost the ISO sensitivity up to 12,800, albeit with a reduction in image size to 3 megapixels. Completing the mode dial are three User settings which essentially allow you to configure the camera in different ways and then access those key settings with a simple turn of the dial. The action of the wheel itself is slightly stiff, meaning that you reach each chosen setting with a definite click and avoid accidentally shooting past the one that you wanted.

The P7000 has a springy shutter button with a definite halfway point, with the camera taking a brief moment to determine focus and exposure but with no discernable shutter delay thereafter. This is surrounded by a pleasingly tactile zoom lever. The zoom is pretty quick to respond, sound-tracked by a mechanical gnat-like buzz. Just behind the shutter release button is a small but clearly marked on/off button which is encircled by a green LED which briefly lights up to signify the power is indeed on. Give it a press and the P7000 powers up in around one second, the lens barrel extending to maximum wide-angle setting and the rear LCD blinking into life. There's also a teeny but bright green adjacent lamp which provides a visual indication when the camera is busy processing files.

ISO Menu	Top

The small and rather inconspicuous AV TV button is actually a neat addition. It toggles the thumb-operated control dial and the circular wheel which surrounds the navigation pad between their defaults of setting the aperture and shutter speed respectively when in the A, S or Manual shooting modes. Next to this and completing the P7000's top-plate is another clever new feature, a dedicated dial for setting exposure compensation - if only it was this easy to change on all cameras.

The rear of the P7000 has a button for popping up the built-in flash, a small window for the aforementioned optical viewfinder up top and dead centre with a very welcome diopter adjustment control alongside it, and teeny flash and auto focus lamps. Below is a 3-inch LCD screen with an impressively high 921,000-dot resolution, a marked improvement on the P6000's screen and providing more than enough detail for you to be able to determine whether you have a sufficiently crisp image. You can also turn on the new Virtual Horizon feature to help ensure that your horizons are perfectly level.

An unmarked control dial is positioned top-right of the LCD screen. Immediately lending the camera a proper 'grown up' feel, this falls readily under the thumb, and allows you to quickly set the aperture or shutter speed, or browse through a sequence of images in playback, amongst other functions. This dial provides a neat solution that is great to use, especially if you are a regular DSLR user. Another DSLR-like feature is the new AE-L / AF-L button which makes it easy to lock either the exposure of the focus point.

Underneath is the button for controlling the screen display – either displaying all settings, providing a 'clean' screen or switching it off entirely, but irritatingly still no live histogram (although this button does call one up in playback mode) - and the self-explanatory playback button. Next is the familiar four-way navigation pad, which allows you to set the flash, focusing, macro and self-timer options, in addition to moving through menus and selecting options, with an 'OK' button at its centre being the means via which changes can be implemented. Surrounding this is a circular wheel, a feature that has been "inspired", shall we say, by some of Nikon's main rivals. As previously mentioned, this is principally used to set the aperture or shutter speed. forming an intuitive partnership with the rear control dial, as well as performing the more mundane tasks of moving through menus and selecting options.

Memory Card Slot	Battery Compartment

The familiar Menu button accesses the usual Nikon menu system, which is clear and easy to navigate. Press this when in Auto capture mode and there's just two menus, Playback and Settings. Turn the dial to Program or one of the advanced shooting modes and press again and you also get the Shooting menu, which offers 13 different additional settings.

The Picture Control option allows you to tweak the look and feel of your images, with 4 presets and a Custom option on offer. The contrast, saturation and sharpening level of each preset can be individually adjusted too, so you should be able to find a setting that suits you. Distortion control automatically corrects barrel distortion, useful for all those 28mm shots of close-up architecture with converging verticals, but it does have to be turned on before you take a picture. D-Lighting is a long-standing Nikon technology that brightens the shadow areas of an image, with three different strengths available.

In playback mode, pressing the same menu button affords access to rudimentary image editing, including Nikon's exposure adjusting D-Lighting function, Skin Softening and Miniature Effect, image slide shows, plus the ability process a RAW file in-camera if required. The new Tone Level function displays a brightness histogram in an unusual vertical orientation, to the right of which is a tone scale. you can move up and down the nine levels and as you do so, the current tone range is displayed as a flashing area in the main image, allowing for more precise verifcation of the exposure. A button to the right features the familiar trashcan icon for deleting images on the fly and completes the rear of the P7000.

On the right flank of the camera – if still viewing it from the rear – there's an eyelet for attaching the supplied shoulder strap and a plastic cover protecting the A/V out / USB and HDMI ports. On the left hand flank is an identical means of threading on the strap, plus the new MIC port which accepts an optional external microphone. The built in speaker is on the bottom of the camera, alongside the centrally positioned, metal tripod mount. The P7000 is powered by a 7.4v lithium ion battery, good for around 350 shots, that slots into the base alongside the SD / SDHC / SDXC card slot.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 10 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 4Mb.

The Nikon Coolpix P7000's image quality is excellent for a compact camera with a small image sensor. The Nikon Coolpix P7000's dealt very well with noise, which doesn't really become obvious until ISO 800. The noise, colour desaturation and loss of detail gets progressively worse as you go from ISO 800 to ISO 1600 and finally 3200 and the unusable 6400 setting.

The Nikon Coolpix P7000 handled chromatic aberrations excellently with limited purple fringing effects appearing only in high contrast situations. The 10.1 megapixel images were a little soft straight out of the camera at the default sharpen setting and either require some further sharpening in an application like Adobe Photoshop, or you should increase the in-camera sharpening level.

The Nikon Coolpix P7000's maximum shutter speed is 60 seconds, which is excellent news for night photography enthusiasts, and the quality of the after-dark images is very good. Macro performance is one of the stand-out highlights, allowing you to focus as close as 2cms away from the subject, although there is a lot of lens distortion and shadowing at such a close distance.

Vibration reduction is a very useful feature that works very well when hand-holding the camera in low-light conditions or using the telephoto end of the zoom range. The built-in flash worked well indoors, with no red-eye and good overall exposure.

Noise

The Nikon Coolpix P7000 has 7 sensitivity settings ranging from ISO 100 to ISO 6400 at full resolution.

ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)
ISO 6400 (100% Crop)

Focal Range

The Nikon Coolpix P7000's 7.1x zoom lens provides a focal length of 28-200mm in 35mm terms, as demonstrated below.

28mm	200mm

Sharpening

Here are two 100% crops - the right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are slightly soft at the default sharpening setting and benefit from some further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop. You can alternatively change the in-camera sharpening level to suit your tastes.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

File Quality

At full resolution, there are three JPEG quality settings available including Normal, Fine and Basic.

Fine (4.19Mb) (100% Crop)	Normal (2.13Mb) (100% Crop)
Basic (1.07Mb) (100% Crop)

Chromatic Aberrations

The Nikon Coolpix P7000 shows little purple fringing, with very limited effects in areas of high contrast as shown in the example below.

Example 1 (100% Crop)

Macro

The Nikon Coolpix P7000 allows you to get as close as 2cms to your subject, in this case a Compact Flash card.

Macro Shot	100% Crop

Flash

The flash settings on the Nikon Coolpix P7000 are Auto, Auto with Red-eye reduction, Fill Flash, Manual (Full, 1/2, 1/4 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 and 1/64), Slow Sync, Rear-curtain Sync and Flash Off. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m. Some vignetting and barrel distortion is apparent at the 28mm wide-anlge setting, irrespective of whether you use the flash or not.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (28mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (28mm)
Flash Off - Telephoto (200mm)	Flash On - Telephoto (200mm)

And here are a couple of portrait shots. As you can see, neither the Fill Flash or the Auto with Red-eye reduction options caused any amount of red-eye, althought thw white balance is noticeably different.

Flash On	Flash On (100% Crop)
Red Eye Reduction	Red Eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The Nikon Coolpix P7000's maximum shutter speed is 60 seconds in the Manual mode, which is excellent news if you're seriously interested in night photography. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 15 seconds at ISO 100.

Night Shot	Night Shot (100% Crop)

Vibration Reduction

The Nikon Coolpix P7000 has an vibration reduction mechanism, which allows you to take sharp photos at slower shutter speeds than other digital cameras. To test this, I took 2 handheld shots of the same subject with the lens set to the same focal length and ISO speed. The first shot was taken with vibration reduction turned off, the second with it turned on. As you can see, with vibration reduction turned on, the images are definitely sharper than with vibration reduction turned off. This feature really does seem to make a difference and could mean capturing a successful, sharp shot or missing the opportunity altogether. Here is a 100% crop of the images to show the results.

Shutter Speed / Focal Length	Anti Shake Off (100% Crop)	Anti Shake On (100% Crop)
1/8 sec / 28mm
1/2 sec / 200mm

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Nikon Coolpix P7000 camera, which were all taken using the 10 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Nikon Coolpix P7000 enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Nikon RAW (NRW) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movie & Video

Product Images

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera / Turned On

Isometric View

Isometric View

Rear of the Camera

Rear of the Camera / Image Displayed

Rear of the Camera / Turned On

Rear of the Camera / Playback Menu

Rear of the Camera / Shooting Menu

Rear of the Camera /ISO Menu

Top of the Camera

Bottom of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Memory Card Slot

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

The Nikon Coolpix P7000 is something of a flawed gem. While we love the handling, with its wealth of clever external controls, and the excellent image quality, the painfully slow RAW processing speeds are a real let-down for a camera that purports to offer a DSLR-experience.

Put the P7000 side-by-side with the new Canon PowerShot G12 and you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference, signalling Nikon's intent to finally get serious with its Coolpix range and take on the long-established leader in the prosumer compact camera market. Nikon's design team have taken advantage of the P7000's larger footprint to implement a winning combination of dials and wheels that make using this camera a breeze for the more experienced user that it's clearly targeted at. Add in the numerous ways of customising the camera to your own way of working, and it's clear that the P7000 is a real photographer's dream, at least from a handling point of view.

This truism continues with the P7000's excellent image quality, thanks largely to the adoption of a sensible 10 megapixel sensor that's physically larger than the one inside most compact cameras. There's no unwanted noise at ISO 100-400, with a little appearing at 800 and 1600 still being perfectly usable, which is a great performance from a 1/1.7-inch sensor and certainly on a par with the P7000's main rivals.

The P7000's feature list also ticks all the right boxes, with an excellent LCD screen, a 28-200mm zoom that's more versatile than the G12's, 720p movies with stereo sound plus a port for an external mic, and even a true optical viewfinder for the purist. Nikon have also added some clever touches such as the neutral density filter, zoom step feature, virtual horizon and tonal range histogram which all add to the P7000's eminent suitability as a pocket camera for pro shooters.

Unfortunately the same can't be said about the RAW performance, arguably an essential part of most serious photographer's workflow. Firstly, Nikon have changed the RAW format again, with the new NRW+ currently only supported by Nikon's own software. Secondly, the burst shooting speed is a rather lackluster 1fps for a maximum of 5 frames. Thirdly and most crucially, the P7000 takes 5 seconds to process a single RAW file and 15 seconds to process a burst of 5 frames, during which the camera locks-up entirely. This is simply too slow on a camera that is trying to be a DSLR in compact form, especially when the P7000's main rivals don't suffer from the same problem.

Unlike the previous P6000 model, price can't save the day for the P7000 either, with the RRP of £489.99 / €580.00 / $499.95 putting it into direct competition with both the Canon PowerShot G12, Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5, several entry-level DSLRs and the new wave of Compact System Cameras from Panasonic, Sony, Olympus et al. We're still very impressed by the new Coolpix P7000, which represents the best-ever pro-level Nikon compact - we're just ultimately put off by that why-am-I-waiting RAW mode...

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4.5
Features	4.5
Ease-of-use	4.5
Image quality	4.5
Value for money	3.5

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Nikon Coolpix P7000 from around the web.

Specifications

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