G. Image and movie playback

The playback button switches the picture playback on and off.

However, you can also use the Fn or preview button for this purpose if you select Playback in the custom settings menu f3 or f4. This is convenient when shooting with heavy telephoto lenses, as the left hand can stay where it is and hold the lens.

An automatic display of your freshly taken images, immediately after each press of the shutter button, can be switched on or off in the playback menu Image review.

Let's add which images the D7000 displays: Usually all the ones it has created itself on the memory card. But:

The playback menu Playback folder can change the folders displayed:

• only the folder currently used for new images
• only folders created by the D7000 (default setting)
• all folders − i.e. also any folders on the memory card that originate from another camera.

The playback menu Hide image allows to exclude photos from playback, i.e. to hide them during the usual scrolling through all pictures. It works with

• any individually selected pictures or
• all pictures taken on certain days.

Flipping through photos | The direction keys to the right and left are the common and widely used operation to jump to the next or previous picture.

I find it more convenient and faster to use the command dials. To enable this, open the custom setting menu f6 Customize command dials and set the option Menus and playback to On.

Then you can scroll backwards and forwards with the rear control dial.

Changing the information displayed with an image | The up and down arrow keys switch between different views for the currently displayed image, with different additional information.

If you follow the tip above to allow scrolling with the dials, you can use the front dial to switch between views instead.

Scrolling with the front and rear dials is much swifter and easier after a short period of getting familiar to it.

The playback menu Display mode clarifies which views are available when displaying entire images.

There are at least two that cannot be switched off:

• a full-screen view with minimum additional information such as file name and date of recording at the bottom of the screen
• a scaled down view with a simple histogram and some key shooting information (aperture, exposure time, ISO sensitivity, white balance etc.).

In addition, you can book in this menu:

• Focus point: A full-screen display showing the AF sensors used for focusing.
• Highlights: A display in which overexposed areas flash − either those where all three colour components are overexposed (RGB) or only red, green or blue.

You can access it with the zoom out key and the arrow keys, see the note at the bottom right of the monitor.

• RGB histogram: An additional page with a thumbnail and four histograms − one simple and one each for the red, green and blue components.

As in the previous display Highlights, overexposed areas can flash to indicate which parts of the image are affected.

• Data: Three additional pages for a series of camera settings with which you took a picture.

Attention: At the end you must select the entry Done and confirm with the OK button, otherwise your changes will not be saved.

Displaying portrait photos | Whether photos taken in portrait format should also appear upright on the monitor is a matter of taste. You have to decide for yourself between correctly aligned and as large as possible. In the playback menu Rotate tall, Nikon sets a default value Off, with which pictures are not rotated.

Move to image editing | From the display of a whole image, the OK button takes you on the shortest possible route to the retouch menu to edit a picture.

Zooming in and out | The buttons with the magnifying glass symbol are for zooming in and out, with the arrow keys you can move the displayed picture section.

If you press button for zooming out while a single entire picture is on the display, you will get to overview displays of 2×2, 3×3, 9×8 pictures and finally a calendar where you can search for dates.

The OK button always takes you from a reduced or enlarged view to the full-screen display of a single image with one click.

Looking through faces in a photo | There is a special trick for this: when you zoom into an image, the D7000 checks if it recognises faces. If so, icons for a dial and face appear at the bottom left of the monitor. Then you can use the front dial to jump from one face to the next at the current magnification.

Comparing images | When you have zoomed into an image, you can use the rear dial to jump to the next or previous one − with the same zoom level and the same image section.

This is a great simplification for comparing similar images. You can easily pick out the sharpest of several possibly blurred pictures or compare individual faces in group shots.

Delete current image | The delete key is the easiest, most obvious way to delete individual photos. Press twice, done.

After deleting an image | In the playback menu After delete, the D7000 looks to see which image it should display after deleting a photo:

• Show next: (default setting): always the next one
• Show previous: always the previous one
• Continue as before: the next image is displayed if you last scrolled forward in your photos and the previous one if you last scrolled backwards.

Deleting multiple images | In the playback menu Delete you can either

• delete all images on a memory card or
• select individual images for deletion in a thumbnail view, or
• delete all pictures taken on specific days.

Follow the instructions at the bottom of the camera screen to find the next steps.

Protect photos from accidental deletion | This can be done with the key button, it prevents accidental deletion of the photo currently displayed.

However, this protection does not help when formatting the memory card.

Start movie playback | You can see from the camera symbol and the running time displayed at the top edge whether a displayed picture belongs to a video. If so, the OK button starts playback.

During movie playback | Note the icons at the bottom of the monitor, they want to tell you:

• The arrow keys control playback:
• ⯅ stops 
• ⯇ ⯈ increases / slows down the playback speed or scrolls individual frames forward / backward in the film when playback is paused.
• ⯆ pauses, the OK button resumes playback.
• The two buttons for zooming control the volume.
• The button with key icon switches to an edit mode where you can crop the video and it allows you to save the currently displayed still image as a separate image file.

Slide show | The playback menu Slide show starts an automatically scrolling playback of all images in the current folder.

Resolution for playback on HDMI devices | When connected to an HDMI device, the D7000 should automatically detect the required resolution. If this does not work, you can try setting the required resolution manually in the setup menu HDMI.

The second selection Device control allows you to control the playback of images from HDMI devices, but requires a TV with the HDMI CEC standard.

Video mode | When connecting to a TV set that is not yet digital, you can set the signal used in the setup menu Video mode. The default value PAL is the European, NTSC the American standard.