Nikon D7000 and Sony a580

Nikon D7000 uses Sony CCD Sensor: "Chipworks.com is doing something that I always wanted to do – to teardown a camera apart. Few weeks ago they took a Nikon D7000 and documented the guts of the camera. The interesting part? The sensor model IMX071 is made by Sony (direct link to image). This is probably not a surprise, but till now I could not find a proof besides the identical DxOMark score of the D7000 and Sony a580.

There has been some speculations in the past that Nikon recently started producing their own sensors. For the D3100, Nikon described the sensor as:

“The D3100 is equipped with a new Nikon DX-format CMOS image sensor and a new image-processing engine, EXPEED 2, both developed by Nikon”.

On the inside, the Nikon D7000 is based around a newly developed DX-format (23.6 x 15.6mm), CMOS image sensor with 16.2 effective megapixel resolution, from a total resolution of 16.9 megapixels. The D7000's imager has a pixel size of 4.78µm, and yields maximum image dimensions of 4,928 x 3,262 pixels. Two lower-resolution options are also available -- either 3,696 x 2,448, or 2,464 x 1,632 pixels.

The Nikon D7000 uses 14-bit analog/digital conversion, and output from the CMOS sensor is handled by a new EXPEED 2 image processor. Compared to the original EXPEED CPU in the D90, EXPEED 2 offers improvements in processing speed, image quality, and power consumption.

The EXPEED 2 CPU's claimed improvements look to be borne out by the camera's specifications. In its Continuous High mode, the Nikon D7000 can shoot as many as 100 JPEG-compressed still images at a rate of 6 frames per second -- a significant improvement over its predecessor, which was limited to 23 JPEG frames at 4.5 fps. When lesser burst speed is required, the Continuous Low mode provides anywhere from one to five frames per second shooting. Another hint of the power on offer from EXPEED 2 can be seen in the Nikon D7000's shutter lag, rated at just fifty milliseconds -- a worthwhile improvement over the 65ms lag of the Nikon D90. http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/D7000/D7000A.HTM

The Nikon D7000 can capture still images as .NEF-format raw files, JPEG compressed files, or as both types simultaneously. To combat the effects of dust on the image sensor, Nikon has included its sensor cleaning function, which uses piezoelectric vibration at four different frequencies to shake dust from the low-pass filter.

Tetsuro Goto mentioned something similar in this interview:

“We have a longstanding relationship with Sony. If the sensors for Nikon D3s, D3 and D700 are designed by Nikon, Nikon D3x and those of the small APS-C sensors are from Sony. We want to use our own sensors in SLRs most popular [small sensor APS-C, Ed], as the performance of our sensors are better. However, it will take some time as it takes to achieve economies of scale.”"



Ports. The Nikon D7000 includes a range of connectivity options. For data transfer to a computer, there's a standard USB 2.0 High Speed port. Videos can be shown on standard or high-definition displays using either the NTSC / PAL switchable composite port, or Type-C Mini HDMI port, respectively. While in use, the standard-def composite port allows the camera's LCD to remain active, but the HDMI port overrides the camera's LCD display. It also supports the Consumer Electronics Control (HDMI-CEC) standard, allowing remote control of certain playback functionality through the HDMI cable, from an attached display's remote control unit. There's also an accessory terminal on the Nikon D7000 that's compatible with the MC-DC2 remote cable release, and the GP-1 GPS unit, both available as optional extras. Finally, the Nikon D7000 has the aforementioned 3.5mm stereo microphone input jack.