Nikon P7000 offers lots of options almost in your pocket

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The P7000 (the camera in the middle) is at the top end of the "Compact" range. It's much larger than its predecessor, the P6000 on the right, and almost as big as the Olympus Micro Four Thirds camera on its left. | Andy Ihnatko

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Updated: April 22, 2011 10:05PM

What should people expect from a compact camera that costs about $400?

(By “compact camera” I mean “small enough to fit into many pockets, but not necessarily small enough to fit into any pocket.” By “About $400” I mean “somewhere within fifty bucks, plus or minus.”)

Camera manufacturers have been aggressively working on this question for the past couple of years. $400 is nearly the cost of a budget SLR, so clearly a consumer is going to expect more than just a simple snapshot camera available in a range of fashion colors. Canon has scored a success with their PowerShot S95. It represents the answer “Put the best possible lens on the tiniest possible body.” The idea behind the Micro Four Thirds System cameras made by Olympus and Panasonic is “Reinvent the SLR as a compact.” Four Thirds cameras feature interchangeable lenses and an image sensor that’s more than five times the area of the Canon’s (which is itself large for a compact camera).

The P7000 (street price: about $450) is Nikon’s unique answer to the question. It has a fixed 28-200mm f2.8 zoom lens that retracts fully into the body and pulls a lens cover over itself when flattened. While it’s a bit too bulky to fit casually in any pocket, it satisfies the basic requirement of a compact: it encourages you to stick it in a bag or a jacket pocket even when you’re not 100% sure you’re going someplace that you’ll want to take pictures. I repeat a basic tenet of photography: the camera you have with you always takes better photos than the $3000 pro SLR that you left at home.

Putting you in control

But Nikon didn’t make it so small that they sacrificed basic usability. That was my main complaint about the similarly-priced Canon S95. There’s barely enough room on its body for a shutter button, a control dial, and a zoom toggle. After three days with it, I was still fumbling to find a comfortable way to hold it. And operating the UI was a delicate enough operation that I tended to just keep it in full automatic mode and hope for the best.

The P7000 fills your hands nicely. It’s a solid slug of metal and when you hold it naturally, its most important controls naturally fall underneath your fingers.

Some people will be intimidated its the sheer quantity of buttons and dials. There are 19 in all, and it’s an overwhelming show of force. I have two points to make on that subject:

• A) As with the S95, taking great photos with the P7000 requires only that you turn the mode knob to “Automatic” and leave it there. Block out the other controls from your perception and they won’t bother you in the least.
• B) More importantly: additional controls don’t automatically make a device trickier to operate. Everything’s laid out in a thoughtful, organized way. Nearly every review of the P7000 notes its physical similarity to Canon’s G12 (if you saw two neighbor kids who looked this similar, you’d naturally assume that nine or ten years ago, this street had one smooooth-talking mailman). The Nikon’s physical user interface makes the P7000 the clear standout of the two.

The Nikon’s most useful functions are right at the surface, where you can access them most easily. Exposure compensation gets its own dial, right under your thumb. If you’re playing with your kids in the snow and you’re worried about your kids’ faces getting underexposed, you flick your thumb and the problem’s solved. A subtle amber LED next to the dial lights up to remind you that you’re overriding the camera’s automatic exposure functions.

There are other solutions to that specific problem, of course. You can select a special “Snow” shooting mode, or choose spot-metering. Nothing’s quite so simple as just flicking a thumb, though.

The star of the P7000’s mechanical user interface is a button to the left of the flash shoe whose function is set by the dime-sized dial that surrounds it. I bracket my shots all the time ... usually when I’ve got it in my head that the snapshot I’m about to take is actually a Photographhhhhh. The camera takes its best guess at the exposure, then takes a bunch more that are deliberately under- and over-exposed. One of these shots is definitely going to be perfect, depending on what section of the image I think is most important. Desktop processing software can also combine all of this exposure data into a single super-detailed image.

Nifty. Most cameras — even ones above the P7000’s price range — bury this feature inside a submenu and make it a pain to engage and disable. With the Nikon’s left knob turned to “BKT,” I just tap one button. The knob has positions for ISO, white balance, image quality, an advanced histogram, and a customizable menu. Almost every camera lets you adjust these things. The P7000 puts those functions front-and-center, and thus encourages you to actually use them.

The P7000 is highly-customizable. Its main control dial can store three separate groups of settings. When I was out taking pictures of squirrels in the park I missed a couple of photos because I couldn’t follow and focus on the critters quickly enough. Afterwards, I defined “U3” as “Squirrel Mode”: a quick twitch of the control knob immediately selects a high ISO and fast shutter speeds, chooses the focusing mode that automatically finds and tracks a moving subject, goes from single-shot to continuous-shooting, and switches to center-weighted exposure.

(The P7000 has seventeen preset Scene modes. Somehow, “Squirrel” never occurred to Nikon.)

Multiple other buttons can either be defined or tweaked via user settings. Some of these buttons are a little weird. There’s a dedicated function button right next to the lens but you can only assign one of six specific functions to it ... and three of those are duplicated by the left control dial. So what’s the point?

At least the camera makes a serious effort. Reading the manual pays off: you can quickly set up the P7000 exactly the way you like it after a few days’ worth of experience.

Studying the manual also reveals many of the camera’s most useful functions. The P7000 is one of those rare consumer cameras that includes a neutral-density filter. When you turn it on, it reduces the amount of light that reaches the image sensor and thus allows you to use wider apertures in bright light.

Translation: “You can do that cool thing where your subject is in focus but the background is all blurry, even if you’re not in a dim room.”

Translation to the translation: the P7000 has plenty of features that will appeal to anybody who’s ever stood someplace with a camera for five minutes or more trying to get the perfect shot, as opposed to “grab and go” shooters or people who just have faith that they can fix the photo later.

I promise that I’ll take the Photo Nerd hat off for the remainder of the review.

Casual shooting

The P7000 does very well in low-light conditions. I was able to take credible handheld shots at 1600 ISO, aided by the P7000’s vibration-reduction feature, in dim restaurant lighting and outside at night. Its 720p HD video mode is a mixed bag. The actual imagery is terrific, but it only shoots at 24 frames per second, resulting in movie files that look a bit jittery compared with a conventional video camera.

Obviously it’s not as accessorizable as an SLR. You do get a hot shoe for an external flash and you can mount a lens adapter that extends its widest range from 28 to 21mm. You can also use a wireless remote that’s cheap and useful enough that you might as well just buy it.

My one consistent complaint about the P7000 is its speed. Its startup time, its focusing speed, its shot-to-shot burst rate, and the responsiveness of its onscreen menu system are all noticeably pokier than its competitors. It’s not so bad that I’d consider it a serious drawback, but it’s worth noting.

Back to the original question: is the P7000 the best expression of “a $400-ish compact camera”?

It’s a highly-subjective question. It certainly is from my personal perspective. I clearly see the reason for a premium $300 snapshot camera: a camera with some advanced manual features, but which is mainly a shoot-and-go affair. I see the reasoning for Micro Four Thirds cameras. Many factors contribute to “a high-quality photo” and two of the most attractive ones are a large image sensor and the ability to swap in some decent lenses.

For $450, I expect to see something that can compete with an SLR in the Comfort and Flexibility arenas, without bringing any of the physical baggage of such a big and weirdly-shaped object. The Canon G12 loiters around that vicinity but only the Nikon P7000 marches straight in and plants its flag.