Nikon Your Guide to Resetting the D7000, Managing Settings, and Understanding Battery Requirements

16 David Busch’s Nikon D7000 Guide to Digital SLR Photography

Setting the Clock

It’s likely that your Nikon D7000’s internal clock hasn’t been set to your local time, so you may need to do that first. If so, the flashing CLOCK indicator on the top-panel LCD will be the giveaway. You’ll find complete instructions for setting the four options for the date/time (time zone, actual date and time, the date format, and whether you want the D7000 to conform to Daylight Savings Time) in Chapter 10. However, if you think you can handle this step without instruction, press the MENU button, use the multi selector (that thumb-friendly button I just described, located to the immediate right of the back panel LCD) to scroll down to the Setup menu, press the multi selector button to the right, and scroll down to Time Zone and Date choice, and press right again. The options will appear on the screen that appears next. Keep in mind that you’ll need to reset your camera’s internal clock from time to time, as it is not 100-percent accurate.

Battery Included

Your Nikon D7000 is a sophisticated hunk of machinery and electronics, but it needs a charged battery to function, so rejuvenating the EN-EL15 lithium-ion battery pack furnished with the camera should be your first step. A fully charged power source should be good for approximately 1,050 shots, based on standard tests defined by the Camera

&Imaging Products Association (CIPA) document DC-002. Nikon’s own standards are quite a bit more optimistic (it predicts as many as 4,500 shots from a single charge). In the real world, of course, the life of the battery will depend on how much image review you do, how many shots you take with the built-in flash, and many other fac- tors. You’ll want to keep track of how many pictures you are able to take in your own typical circumstances, and use that figure as a guideline, instead.

A BATTERY AND A SPARE

I always recommend purchasing Nikon brand batteries (for about $50) over less- expensive third-party packs, even though the $30 substitute batteries may offer more capacity at a lower price (some may even top the 1,900 mAh offered by the Nikon battery). My reasoning is that it doesn’t make sense to save $20 on a component for a $1,200 camera, especially since batteries have been known to fail in potentially harmful ways. You need only look as far as Nikon’s own recall of its earlier EN-EL3 batteries, which forced the company to ship out thousands of free replacement cells. You’re unlikely to get the same support from a third-party battery supplier that sells under a half-dozen or more different product labels and brands, and may not even have an easy way to get the word out that a recall has been issued.

If your pictures are important to you, always have at least one spare battery available, and make sure it is an authentic Nikon product.