I'm looking at buying 1 this week. I have had a play with 1, and it seems to do what I want. I was wondering if anyone here had any views on it or an alternative. I mainly photograph nature so a good highish zoom is important as is good quality glass. Also a 6+ megapixel ccd would be good.

Cheers
Simon

Simon, do a search on here for S7000 and you should get a few threads popping up. I seem to remember this camera was discussed not so long ago and there are current and former owners of this and similar models posting in the forum. I think all of them have said that it's a fairly good piece of kit in the non-SLR line-up.

You mention photographing nature -- as in wildlife or landscapes or both? For landscapes I think you might find the S7000 a bit lacking very quickly as I notice from the specifications on www.dpreview.com that the minimum aperture is only f/8 and that is way too big for landscape work, as you would typically want to be working with apertures of f/11, 16, 22 and 32 to try and squeeze as much detail and depth of field out of the landscape as possible. For landscape work check that the front element of the lens does not rotate as it focuses as this could give you problems when you come to using filters. Lastly, and I don't want to put you off but the widest zoom is only 35mm and again, you might find yourself wanting to go wider within a short period of time.

D'oh didn't do a search. When I say nature, I really mean wildlife but with the odd landscape thrown in, but on a couple of photo forums I have seen some stunnning landscape photo's tahen with 1.
I'm not into photography in a big way, I just want a fairly decent camera that will cope with what I throw at it, with out costing mega bucks.

I have a 35mm slr, but its only the body with a standard lens, (nicked of my parents) and I really don't want to go down the route of interchanganle lenses.

I think if you are looking for a good all-rounder this might do the job for you. The other folks'll be along in a minute :)

I had one, it was a good camera. The lens does rotate, but it's not an issue, because to use filters you have to fil a barrel over it anyway. I used several with mine no problem.

AS for DOF, the sensors in these cameras are so small you get huge DOF anyway, the problem I had with mine was getting a narrow enough DOF for portraits and such like!

I shot some good landscapes with it, but for wildlife you will have to get pretty close, as it's only 6x magnification. You can buy a tele convert lens for it, but I suffered terrible vignetting at anything other than maximum zoom.

The macro facility on it was very good though, it can focus up to 1cm away! Got some quite good stuff with it.

Overall, it was a good piece of kit. An absolute steal for what they cost now, but just don't expect it to be as controllable as you may want it to be, especially after having a 35mm SLR.

Also, shoot in 6mp RAW instead of 12MP JPEG, the image quality is better.

Geezer

Cheers guys, Geezer that is exactly what I was hoping someone would post, its flaws. X6 should be good enough for me on wildlife as I have no problem getting close to the subject. I once got 20 yards from a wild 12 point red Stag, (I'm hunter, so know how to get close).

TBH I never really use the SLR cos my parents still have all the lenses.

This is going to be an upgrade from my current Sony DSC-P8. Which is a great PnS but thats about it.

The DOF thing is worrying though, any work rounds??

I've just bought the new Canon S2 IS, mainly because the zoom on my A70 wasn't good enough for wildlife pics - can't fault this one. 12x optical, and image stabilisation. I'm very, very pleased with it.

I've got an S7000 - it's my first "proper" camera :) I love it. Great pictures out of it - especially at the current price (mine's probably lost about £50 in 18 months :) )

Does everything I want it to do.

Just my 2p :)

Dan