Nikon D5100 vs. Nikon D7000: My First Impressions

I've been a happy owner of a Nikon D5100 for almost a year. Until last week. I decided to switch to the Nikon D7000 and, after just a few days, I'm compelled to write this blog post for others not to make my "mistake" and take an informed decision.

I want to be clear: the Nikon D5100 is an excellent DSLR camera for amateurs, and I'm sure it's a perfect choice for many amateurs photographers out there. In fact, it shares many important things with the D7000, its bigger sister: the very sensor itself and the image processor. As far as it concerns the image quality you're going to squeeze out of them, they're almost on par: the D7100 has a slightly wider dynamic range (13.9 EV vs 13.6 EV, a 2.2% difference) but so far I haven't succeeded in appreciating the difference.

Many differences between the two cameras are subtle, and many additional features you can find on the D7000 may be of no interest to you, such as the compatibility with older lenses without autofocus motor. On the contrary, some features of the D5100 that aren't available on the D7000 may be valuable to you: on-camera HDR, for example, is a big advantage if you want to shoot HDR photos without the hassle of a complex post-production workflow. I don't shoot HDR, but I recognize that many people do or may be interested in doing so.

If you're wondering about the differences, just Google for it: it's a hot topic. This post, for example, is an extensive yet very well summarized comparison table.

Why, then, did I decide to change it so soon? Basically, for a couple of reasons that are very important to me.

Ergonomics and Ease of Use (If You Shoot in Full Manual Mode)

I knew it, but I didn't bother investigating any further. And it was a major error. Ergonomics is important, as well as the organization of the camera controls, especially when it impairs the ability of shooting as quick as you'd like. I'm not a pro, but I'm an amateur that very often shoots in full manual mode. And when I'm not, I'm using Aperture priority mode and, in either case, I often need to tweak the camera settings from one shoot to another. The D5100 falls a bit short on this side and that's just where the D7000 shines.

Basically, when shooting with the D7000, I'm almost never entering the camera menu: just a "flick of a switch" and I'm done. The D7000 lets you change many parameters just using buttons and command dials, including the following:

• Exposure compensation.
• Flash compensation.
• Release mode.
• Metering mode.
• Autofocus mode and autofocus area mode.
• ISO sensitivity.
• White balance.

The settings that are quickly accessible from a combination of a button and a dial are the great majority you usually need. Moreover, the D7000 offers two additional mechanisms to quickly speed up the camera tuning:

• Two user modes (U1 and U2), that let you save entire banks of camera settings and just recall them using the mode dial.
• My Menu: you can build a custom menu and populate it with your favorite menu settings.

That's almost everything I need when shooting outside a controlled environment. The ergonomics is very well thought of: you quickly get used to the camera buttons and their position and in no time you find yourself tweaking many parameters without leaving the viewfinder. That's a major win against the D5100, for which you've got to resort to the camera menu for many of those parameters.

With the D5100 I lost some shots because I hadn't got sufficient time to setup the camera. With the D7000, this problem is greatly mitigated. And your subjects won't get bored when you fiddle with your camera, staring at its screen.

The possibility of customising the behaviour of many D7000 buttons and the availability of two additional buttons on the front side of the camera (the function button and the preview button) provide additional flexibility to your setups. I almost exclusively use the AF-ON technique and, since neither camera provide a dedicated AF-ON button, I have to assign this function to another one (the AE-L/AF-L button). Even if I could do that on the D5100 (and you cannot), you would simply run out of programmable buttons. The D7000, on the other hand, lets you assign AF-ON to the AE-L/AF-L button and gives you the possibility of assigning the other two buttons to functions you may need during your shooting session, such as quick switching to spot metering or flash-value lock.

Focus

My first impressions confirms that the D7000 focus system is way ahead, when compared to the D5100's one. First of all, the D7000 offers 39 focus points, 9 of which are cross-type, against the 11 ones offered by the D5100, of which only 1 is cross-type. But the number of focus points isn't just the only important metric. I tried, although not yet thoroughly, to compare the behaviour of the two focus systems when tracking moving subjects and I've got the clear impression that the D7000 is much faster and more precise than the D5100. Both focus systems have their limits and may experience difficulties in certain conditions: but in the same situation (and, of course, with the same lens), I find the D7000 a lot faster.

This fact, along with the fact that the autofocus mode and the autofocus area mode can be configured with the dials, guarantee that the D7000 provides a smoother overall experience when shooting, focussing and tweaking the camera settings.

Conclusion

These two factors influenced my decision making and I finally changed my D5100 with a new D7000. Everyone's got its own needs and priorities and, in my case, the possibility of using the camera in full manual mode with such a great improvement in terms of speed and effectiveness was crucial.

Obviously, I'm benefitting from the additional features of the D7000, but the thing I really missed was its ease of use.

If you've got the same doubts, if you're experiencing the same troubles, or if you think you'll take real advantage of some of its distinctive features, give the D7000 a try. If you're happy with the D5100, think twice before switching and investing more money on a new camera. A better lens instead of a better camera could be a wiser choice.

A New Firmware Is Available for the Nikon D5100

Nikon has released an updated firmware for its consumer DSLR camera, the Nikon D5100. The new firmware, v. 1.01, officially solves the following bugs:

• Some memory cards weren't recognized correctly.
• The selective color retouch tool sometimes left the border of an image unchanged when the image quality was set to NEF+JPG and the image size was set to M or S.
• The exposure differential when taking HDR images using matrix metering and automatic exposure differential is not fixed to 2 EV any longer.

Installing the firmware is straightforward:

• Copy the firmware image to a memory card root folder and insert the card into the camera.
• Choose the Firmware version item in the camera Configuration menu.
• Use the Update menu item and follow the on-screen instructions. The upgrade will take less than a couple of minutes.
• Turn off the camera and remove the memory card.
• Turn on the camera, check if the new firmware has been installed, using the Firmware version item in the camera Configuration menu.
• Turn off the camera and wait at least 5 seconds before using it.

Undocumented Changes

I discovered that the weird Auto ISO behaviour with a hot-shoe mounted flash that I described in another post has suffered a change. With the new firmware, the Auto ISO behaviour with both the pop-up flash and a hot-shoe mounted flash is the same and is consistent with the Auto ISO documented behaviour: the ISO is automatically raised up to the maximum value specified in the camera settings.

Weird Auto ISO Behaviour on Nikon D5100 With a Hot-Shoe Mounted Flash

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ISO sensitivity is one of the three parameters, together with aperture and shutter speed, used to determine the exposure of a shot. Raising the ISO sensitivity lets the sensor react more quickly to light, thus allowing for smaller apertures or faster shutter speeds. The ISO sensitivity scale is linear: using an ISO 200 setting, for example, will have the sensor react with twice the speed than with an ISO 100. If other parameters are kept fixed, raising ISO sensitivity from 100 to 200 corresponds to a light increment of 1 stop.

The possibility of choosing an appropriate ISO sensitivity with the flick of a switch gives photographers a degree of freedom: you can maintain a fixed exposure level changing the ISO sensitivity and compensating with a corresponding aperture change or shutter speed change. It's so handy that I assigned the Fn button of my camera to ISO sensitivity, so that I can change it with just one click.

Auto ISO

To make photographers' life easier, many digital cameras offer an Auto ISO mode: the camera will automatically raise the ISO sensitivity in insufficient light conditions. Auto ISO on recent Nikon cameras works as follow:

• The currently (manually) selected ISO sensitivity is treated as a minimum.
• You choose a maximum ISO sensitivity.
• You choose a minimum shutter speed.
• When light condition is such that a shutter speed slower than the selected minimum is required, the camera will automatically increase the ISO sensitivity.
• When the maximum ISO sensitivity is reached, the camera won't increase it further and will fall back to changing other parameters, depending on the mode you're shooting.

The good thing of this algorithm is its predictability: I turn Auto ISO on often and also made it part of a custom menu for easier access (although I'd really like to be able to assign a button to it).

Auto ISO with a Hot-Shoe Mounted Flash

The behaviour of the Auto ISO algorithm is consistent when using the camera pop-up flash in slow mode as well. Unfortunately, things are weirder when using a hot-shoe mounted flash, such as an SB-400. In this case, the camera increases the ISO sensitivity up to four times the value currently selected and won't raise it any more, even if you selected a greater maximum ISO.

Let's suppose you chose a value of 1600 ISO as maximum sensitivity and the current sensitivity is set to 100. When using a hot-shoe mounted flash, the camera will progressively increase the sensitivity up to four time the selected ISO, in this case 400, and will not increase it any more.

As far as I know, this behaviour is not documented in the camera manual and a quick Google search confirms this behaviour is known on other Nikon cameras as well.

Once you learn it, it's something you can live with. In fact, I often manually increase the ISO sensitivity so as to increase the maximum sensitivity the camera will choose. Since I'm not often using sensitivities as high as 6400 ISO, that's just a couple of button clicks away.

However, since it's undocumented behaviour, I do consider that overriding the it Auto ISO settings is no good. After all we shoot manually, although with the help of partially automated task such as this, because we're supposed to know what we're doing.

Could I quickly switch Auto ISO on and off, I'd surely shoot with manual ISO when using an external flash. Unfortunately, the Nikon D5100 won't allow you to do this easily, the quickest way being customizing your own menu; but to be fair, the reduced control customization capabilities is by far the only complaint I have about the D5100.

Update: D5100 Firmware v. 1.01

As described in a later post, the 1.01 firmware seems to fix this undocumented "feature": the Auto ISO behaviour is the same when using either the pop-up flash or a hot-shoe mounted flash.