Nikon D7000 Review #Nikon #D7000 #Camera

Nikon D7000 Review.

  

Review based on a production Nikon D7000 with firmware V1.00, 1.00, 1.002

When it was announced in September the D7000 took a lot of people by surprise. Although a D90 successor had been on the horizon for some time, what wasn't expected was how close in specification terms the new camera would turn out to be to the D300S. In some respects, in fact, the D7000 actually outguns its (supposedly) semi-pro cousin, and offers a compelling upgrade option to both D90 and D300S owners, whilst nominally sitting between the two in Nikon's current lineup.

Although ergonomically, the D7000 is a very close match for the D90, its overall 'feel' is considerably more serious, thanks to a magnesium alloy body shell and slightly thicker rubber coating on the hand grip and rear of the camera. At 16.2Mp the D7000 offers the second highest resolution of any Nikon DSLR, behind only the 24Mp D3X. All of these pixels are packed onto a newly developed CMOS sensor, which is almost certainly the same or very similar to that in the Sony Alpha SLT-A55. As well as extra resolution, the new sensor also offers a higher 'standard' ISO span of 100-6400, expandable up to the equivalent of ISO 25,600.

The D7000's AF and metering systems are also new, and represent a significant upgrade to those used in the D90. The new camera boasts a 39-point AF array with 9 cross-type AF points and works in collaboration with a new 2016-pixel RGB metering sensor to allow 3D AF tracking (essentially tracking by subject color, explained here). Other changes include the same combined live view/movie switch control as the 3100, and a significantly upgraded movie specification, up to 'full HD' - 1920x1080 resolution at 24fps. Unlike the D90, the D7000 can also maintain AF during live view and movie shooting, thanks to its AF-F ('full time') AF mode.

D90 owners have been waiting for a replacement camera for a while, and although the D90 isn't set for retirement quite yet, the D7000 certainly represents a compelling upgrade. It took longer than we'd hoped for a production D7000 to be supplied to us, but now that we've had one for a a few weeks we've been able to produce an in-depth review. Read on to find out what we think of Nikon's newest DSLR...

Nikon D7000 Key Features

• 16.2MP CMOS sensor
• 1080p HD video recording with mic jack for external microphone

India and China set $100bn trade target by 2015

 

 

 

Indian and China have agreed a new $100bn (£66bn) bilateral trade target by 2015, up from $60bn in 2010.

The two sides agreed to take measures to promote greater Indian exports to China, to reduce India's trade deficit.
Companies have already signed business deals worth $16bn on the opening day of Chinese PM Wen Jiabao's three-day official visit to India.
The latest of a number of world leaders to visit India, Mr Wen is accompanied by some 400 Chinese business leaders.
China is India's largest trading partner.
Military build-up A joint communique signed by the two sides on Thursday said that they had agreed to expand co-operation in infrastructure, environment, information technology, telecommunications, and investment and finance.
It said that both wanted "to draw on each other's strengths and pursue mutual benefit and win-win results".
Mr Wen held talks on Thursday with Indian PM Manmohan Singh.
The two men discussed a number of sensitive issues, including a long-running border dispute.
Both sides said they need more time to sort out the border question.
The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder in Delhi says that the Chinese premier's visit amounted to a strong endorsement of the economic relationship between the two Asian giants, even though contentious issues remain.

Mr Wen's delegation in India was much larger than those headed by leaders of the US and UK

These include China's military build-up on the border and India's support for the Dalai Lama.
The two countries signed some 50 deals in power, telecommunications, steel, wind energy, food and marine products worth $16bn at the end of a business conference attended by Mr Wen in the capital, Delhi, on Wednesday evening.
This overtakes the $10bn of agreements signed between Indian and American businesspeople during the recent visit of US President Barack Obama.
"There is enough space in the world for the development of both China and India and there are enough areas for us to co-operate," Mr Wen told the business conference.
Mr Singh - speaking after his 11th meeting with Mr Wen in the last five years - said that a strong partnership between the two countries "will contribute to long-term peace, stability, prosperity and development in Asia and the world".
Massive delegation The Chinese delegation was larger than the number in delegations led in recent weeks to India by US President Barack Obama (215), French President Nicolas Sarkozy (more than 60) and British Prime Minister David Cameron (about 40).

Continue reading the main story

INDIA-CHINA TRADE

• China became India's largest trading partner in 2008
• Bilateral trade to hit $60bn this year
• By 2050, they are tipped to be the world's two leading economies
• India's top exports to China include ore, fabrics, copper, precious stones and metals
• China's top exports to India are machinery, iron and steel, fertilisers and silk

The communique said that the two sides had decided to establish a "mechanism of regular exchange of visits between heads of state and government".

"They welcomed the opening of the telephone hotline between the prime minister of India and the Chinese premier and agreed on regular consultations between the two leaders on issues of importance to both countries," it said.
"They also agreed to establish the mechanism of annual exchange of visits between the two foreign ministers."
On Thursday China's premier will also met India's External Affairs Minister SM Krishna and the ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi.
On Friday Mr Wen travels to India's nuclear-armed neighbour and rival, Pakistan, for a two-day official visit.

 

Facebook 2010 Sales Said Likely to Reach $2 Billion, More Than Estimated #Facebook #FB #Business #Social #Networks

Facebook 2010 Sales Said Likely to Reach $2 Billion, More Than Estimated.

Facebook Inc., the world’s most popular social-networking service, is likely to generate 2010 revenue of about $2 billion, a larger sum than projected earlier, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Sales will more than double from 2009, said the people, who declined to be identified because the privately held company doesn’t disclose revenue. Facebook had $700 million to $800 million in sales last year, and the 2010 figure was previously expected to be closer to $1.5 billion, according to two other people familiar with the matter earlier this year.
Facebook’s more than half a billion users have made it an attractive target for advertisers, including Coca-Cola Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Adidas AG. In October, Facebook surpassed Yahoo! Inc. when ranked by the number of global users, making it No. 3 behind Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., according to ComScore Inc., a research firm in Reston, Virginia.
“The love affair of consumers with social networks is an abiding one,” said Karsten Weide, an analyst at IDC in San Mateo, California. “All the big brands are there.”
Jonathan Thaw, a spokesman for Palo Alto, California-based Facebook, declined to comment.
Facebook, founded in 2004, would reach $2 billion faster than Yahoo and at almost the same pace as Google. Yahoo, founded in 1994, posted revenue of $1.6 billion in 2003 and $3.6 billion in 2004. Google, founded in 1998, reached $1.5 billion in 2003 and then $3.2 billion in 2004.
‘Person of Year’
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive officer, was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” yesterday. The publication noted his role in “creating a new system of exchanging information” and “changing how we all live our lives.”
Zuckerberg, 26, created Facebook for college students when he was a sophomore at Harvard University. After opening the site to people outside of higher education, the company surpassed News Corp.’s MySpace as the No. 1 social network two years ago. Facebook users now post a billion pieces of content, such as photos and messages, every day, Time said.
Facebook has maintained ad prices, even as its user growth creates a surge of space for commercial messages, the company said in August. Facebook also makes money from a credits program, which lets people buy virtual items in online games.
Figuring It Out
“People are learning and they’re figuring out how they can work with Facebook,” said Christian Juhl, a president at digital ad agency Razorfish, part of Paris-based Publicis Groupe SA. “You can prove success without a massive expenditure.”
Facebook is making gains in so-called display ads -- the banners, videos and other graphical promotions that appear on websites. It may grab about 9.4 percent of that market in the U.S. this year, up from 6.6 percent in 2009, according to EMarketer Inc. in New York.
Yahoo, which leads the market, will have about 16.2 percent, down from 16.5 percent, the firm estimates. Google, which is stronger in Internet-search ads, may take 6.7 percent, up from 4.7 percent.
Facebook’s growth is also attracting investor interest. The company has a valuation of $43.1 billion, according to SharesPost Inc., an exchange for privately held stocks. That’s up more than 60 percent from three months ago and almost quadruple the level in March.
At the same time, Facebook’s expansion has increased concerns about privacy. After lawmakers and advocacy groups complained that it shares too much personal data, the company introduced simpler privacy controls in May and said it was reducing the amount of user information that’s publicly available.
“They’ve done a better job recently around privacy, which alleviates a lot of the concern,” Juhl said. “That’s something we’ll always have to keep watching. But that’s nothing new -- whether it’s Google, Microsoft, Yahoo or Facebook.”

 

BP Falls Most in Four Months After U.S. Files Lawsuit Over Gulf Oil Spill #BP #Gulf #Oilspill

BP Falls Most in Four Months After U.S. Files Lawsuit Over Gulf Oil Spill.

BP Plc fell the most in almost four months in London trading after the Obama administration filed a suit saying the company and four others violated environmental laws in the largest U.S. oil spill.
The shares dropped as much as 3.2 percent, the most since Aug. 24, and were down 2.3 percent at 465.4 pence as of 9:08 a.m. local time. The stock is down 29 percent since the April 20 blowout on the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers and caused the Macondo well to leak crude into the Gulf of Mexico until July.
BP has set aside $40 billion to pay for cleanup and litigation from the spill and is paying into a $20 billion escrow account, demanded by Obama, to pay claims from individuals affected by the accident. The shares have rallied more than 50 percent since the June agreement with the U.S.
“This raises a bit more uncertainty,” said Peter Hitchens, an analyst at Panmure Gordon & Co. in London. “People were getting comfortable that things had calmed down.”
Credit-default swaps on BP rose 20 basis points to 103, according to data provider CMA.
The lawsuit, filed yesterday in federal court in New Orleans, is the first brought by the U.S. over the spill. The Justice Department’s civil investigation is continuing, as well as a probe of potential criminal violations.
The lawsuit seeks damages under the Clean Water Act and a declaration that four of the defendants are liable under the Oil Pollution Act for all removal costs and damages caused by the oil spill, including damages to the environment, according to a Justice Department statement. The lawsuit doesn’t ask for a specified amount of damages.
Clean Water Act
The Clean Water Act authorizes the U.S. to seek civil penalties of $1,100 for each barrel of oil spilled, or in certain circumstances, as much as $4,300 a barrel from the companies involved, government lawyers said in a September filing with a court in New Orleans. The government reported in August that 4.9 million barrels were spilled.
“We intend to prove that these violations caused or contributed to this massive oil spill, and that the defendants are therefore responsible -- under the Oil Pollution Act -- for government removal costs, economic losses, and environmental damages,” Attorney General Eric Holder said yesterday at a news conference.
“We have not asked for damages at this point because it’s going to take years to fully quantify what the damages are,” Tony West, an assistant attorney general who oversees the Justice Department’s civil division, said at the press conference.
‘Solely’ Allegations
The lawsuit “is solely a statement of the government’s allegations and does not in any manner constitute any finding of liability or any judicial finding that the allegations have merit,” said Scott Dean, a BP spokesman.
“Alone among the parties, BP has stepped up to pay for the clean-up of the oil, setting aside $20 billion to pay all legitimate claims,” Dean said in an e-mail. “We took these steps before any legal determination of responsibility and will continue to fulfill our commitments in the Gulf as the legal process unfolds.”
In addition to London-based BP, the owner of the well, defendants in the lawsuit include units of Vernier, Switzerland- based Transocean Ltd., which owned the rig, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and MOEX Offshore 2007 LLC, part owners of the well. Anadarko is based in The Woodlands, Texas. Mitsui & Co. owns 70 percent of Mitsui Oil Exploration Co., which holds 10 percent of the field where the Macondo well is located through its U.S. subsidiary MOEX Offshore, according to the Mitsui Oil website.
Transocean, Anadarko
“No drilling contractor has ever been held liable for discharges from a well under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990,” Guy Cantwell, a Transocean spokesman, said yesterday in an e- mail. “The responsibility for hydrocarbons discharged from a well lies solely with its owner and operator.”
MOEX Offshore said in an e-mailed statement that it is reviewing the complaint.
“We stand by our statement of June 18, that the operator’s decisions and actions on the rig likely amount to gross negligence and/or willful misconduct,” John Christiansen, an Anadarko spokesman, said in an e-mail. “We recognize that we may have obligations under federal law, and we will continue to look to the operator to pay all legitimate claims as it has committed to do.”
Other defendants and claims could be added later, Holder said at the news conference. Halliburton Co., which provided the cement to plug the well, wasn’t named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
BP Profit
BP captured 800,000 barrels of oil before the well was capped on July 15, according to a report in August by a team of government and academic scientists. The company returned to profit in the third quarter with a net income of $1.8 billion after a record loss in the second three months of the year.
Beyond the Clean Water Act penalties, the U.S. also can seek damages for destruction of natural resources, loss of taxes and royalties and removal costs under the Oil Pollution Act, the government said in court papers in September.
The U.S. lawsuit will become part of multidistrict litigation, according to the Justice Department statement.
The case is U.S. v. BP Exploration & Production Inc., 10- 04536, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana (New Orleans) The combined case is In re Oil Spill by the Oil Rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, 2:10- md-2179, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana (New Orleans).