The Nikon D70 was arguably one of Nikon’s best-selling cropped-sensor DSLR that succeeded it’s semi-pro cousin the D100 back in the early twenty tens. It’s 7x series body size was slightly smaller than the three-digit models but still larger than the 4x, 5x, 8x and 9x series of the Nikon family, though I am still wondering why Nikon chose to release smaller sized consumer and entry level DSLRs, the D70 and the D70s enjoyed a long period of shelf life — much longer than the short-lived D50.

Since then, I was waiting for a true successor of the D70. The D700 marked the revival of Nikon’s 7-series and it lived up to all my expectations in image quality, handling and performance. But the D700 does not do video, the mark of a modern DSLR post-D90 era, and video is fast becoming an important part of my photographic needs — the Canon 5D Mark II became a subject of interest as I was hunting for a V-DSLR solution — I suffered serious pains from RSI on my right elbow and I can no longer carry heavy camera rigs.

And then the Micro Four Thirds Revolution erupted. I bought the Panasonic Lumix DMC GH-1 which was a fantabulous camera that produced great broadcast-quality video images (Danny Choo’s Culture: Japan was shot with the GH1 package), and thought I’s never look back.

Unfortunately, the GH1 shoots bad still images right out of the box, I had to shoot only in RAW and perform some Photoshop magic before it’s still images become satisfactory, so I had no choice but to carry 2 cameras if, and when I am on a serious photography outing.

When Nikon announced the development of the 16-mega pixel D7000, I knew I’d have to get one to complete my collection, and I was hoping that the 7-series magic will somehow bestow upon this new camera. Last month, I have gotten my hands on one of these cameras, and I was elated to find this camera meets all my expectations and exceeds some.

Body Design, Handling and Nitty-gritties.

Handling-wise, the D7000 body is almost the same as the D70, this means it is not a small body frame, like the D90 (though it was compared to the D90, but I’d rather compare it with the D70), and it is good news for me: I find the D90 a little too small for my taste.

It fits snugly in my mid-sized Asian hands and retains Nikon’s superb ergonomics; buttons are within reach without hunting, the viewfinder is bright enough for manual focusing. All of which I love.

The double SD card slot is the icing on the cake — I can now put an eye-fi card in one slot for wifi connectivity and put a high speed SD card in another for video storage — these are designed for very practical usage in the field.

Video, Sound and System Software.

Needless to say, Nikon has finally gotten a winner here, video-wise, it’s video output is much better than its bigger cousin, the Nikon D300s, and though the autofocus during video shoot can be annoyingly noisy at times (depending on the lens), I found it’s video quality really really good.

For one, the D7000 produces *.MOV files, that means I could drop the videos directly onto my Final Cut Pro timeline without conversions. The camera’s audio port is a larger headphone-sized socket, this means I no longer need to find convertors for the microphones, better even, this means the ports are more robust and can withstand a beating.

It’s automatic level control does a great job when I plugged different kinds of microphones into the camera and it recorded audio with no major spikes and gave me good, clean sound.

My only gripe with audio is its internal speaker distorts too easily, to be fair, I have also taken a look at the Lumix GH-2, which is basically the same camera as the GH-1, with on screen audio level display. If you are looking getting a camera that does video as well as it does stills, the Lumix system doesn’t cut it. Yet.

(As far as Micro Four Thirds go, the Olympus EP1 generates better still images than the Lumix, but it’s video quality doesn’t even come close to the Lumix.)

In short, I will not be buying another V-DSLR for a while. And if you are looking for a camera in this price range, your other choice is the 1.6x cropped-sensor Canon 60D. But I’d take the D7000 anytime.

Image samples will be posted in my Chinese-language blog and a link will be posted here as soon as they are up.