Luke Thompson has been putting the Nikon P7000 through it's paces recently....

"Thanks to Camera Electronic and Nikon Australia I have been trialling the new Nikon P7000 and SB-400 Speedlight. This is not a complete review of the camera and speedlight but a summary of my personal experience using them, highlighting the most useful features.

The Nikon P7000 is a top of the line compact camera with many advanced features to make shooting simpler without compromising quality. For me, it's the camera I take everywhere and the biggest advantage is that it's quick to use and always on hand to capture the moment.

I take it with me when I'm scouting locations, having a good time with friends and to shoot behind the scenes photos on my shoots.

Physically in my hand the camera feels great. Nice and solid. The controls are all in sensible places and give quick access to the functions most used by photographers. One particular feature I love is the simple actions for changing shutter speed and aperture in manual mode. There is a scroll wheel for each so you never have to hold down two buttons or scroll through a menu to adjust your exposure manually. Adjusting things like iso, white balance, quality and exposure compensation is just as easy. No more hunting through menus whilst shooting with this one.

I must admit I generally use this camera on Program mode and simply adjust the exposure or flash compensation. It works that well in auto mode that I rarely need to adjust it.

The one thing in particular that excited me about this little camera was the hot shoe and Nikon iTTL. The hot shoe means that you can attach any Nikon speedlight and shoot in auto mode using bounce flash indoors. We all know how much of a huge difference bouncing a flash off the ceiling will make as opposed to using it on camera. Nikon iTTL is renowned for being spot on and giving great exposures every time. The P7000 lives up to the Nikon reputation here and works a charm when I used it with the SB-400 and my SB-800 too.

When you attach the SB-400 to the P7000 you end up with a neat little package perfect for social photos. Rivaling the quality of a much bigger, bulkier and more expensive DSLR and flash combo. It's not quite pocketable (not in my pockets anyway) but it is small enough to fit in a little shoulder pouch so when your not shooting you can actually forget about it and enjoy yourself.

While the SB-400 doesn't have an auto focus lamp the P7000 does, so you can still focus in that dimly lit situation. Also the SB-400 doesn't have power adjustments on the flash, but when the P7000 allows you to use flash exposure compensation easily. It's great at giving a nice fill flash too.

Another exciting possibility is that if you throw an SC-29 TTL cord into the bag you've got a tiny kit that will enable you to get that tiny flash away from the lens and up nice and high for more flattering and natural lighting. One more option is too include a small inflatable softbox in your little bag. Then you can shoot with an off camera soft light achieving results that many wouldn't have thought possible from such a tiny kit. When your done shooting you can deflate the softbox and still pack everything away in a small shoulder bag and enjoy the evening. Pretty darn cool if you ask me.

As a brief summary I would say that the Nikon P7000 is a great camera that opens up lots of creative possibilities in a tiny package. Combined with the SB-400 and you have great kit in such a tiny size. A great asset to the camera bag of any professional shooter and also a fantastic standalone camera for anyone who wants more control and quality out of a compact.

Below are some of the photos I've captured with it so far. (straight out of the camera with no post production)"