Nikon D300 Review and Photos - Dave’s first thoughts on his new toy!

Nikon  D300 Review by Dave Deluria

 Introduction.

Rather than make myself more important than I should. I’m the first to say that I’m in no way the best authority on reviewing cameras. What I can say is that I do love to use them. I am enamored both by the technical innovations each successive generation of cameras that are made available for both hobbyists and professionals as well as the artistry that most create with them.

As far as the Nikon DSLR products, I’ve personally owned and used the D40, the D80, the D200 and now the latest offering for the semi-professional and advanced hobbyists the D300.

Rather than make this a comprehensive review, I would rather just discuss the new features and improvements made on this model compared to those that came before it that I have used and owned.

Since it’s announcement in August along with it’s new big brother the D3, those who cared to follow all the hoopla and buzz on the internet were perplexed how little information was made available about the D300. Indeed almost all the images that were made available by Nikon and it’s community of early testers were given free reign to use the D3, but not the D300. This has lead to some wild speculation that Nikon wasn’t promoting it due to less than stellar performance which is quite the opposite when it came to releasing the D200 because it surpassed it’s predecessor the D100 by leaps and bounds.

Needless to say, now that this camera is now in the hands of unbiased owners, I’ll do my part to provide some information about it.

First impressions.

The first thing everybody notices is basically it looks like it’s predecessor with some obvious changes like the bigger LCD. Indeed if it wasn’t for the label in the front, one wouldn’t be hard pressed to tell the difference between a D300 and a D200 from a couple of meters away. This already gives previous owners of the D100 and D200 some confidence that they’ll be able to migrate quickly to the new model with little to no investment in reading the manual. Suffice as to say, the first thing I noticed taking the camera out of the box was how much thicker the manual is compared to it’s predecessor. The D200 manual is 210 pages from front cover to back while the D300 tops out at 420. This already gives you an inkling that one needs to still take the time to go through the manual all over again and try to learn all the new features this camera has to offer.

After the thick manual, I then paid attention to the new 3” LCD. After using it the whole day yesterday to take sample images which the internet was in serious shortage off, I was again surprised now how cramped the D200’s LCD is. Nikon takes advantage of the extra screen real-estate by making the fonts on the user menus a bit smaller yet still as legible compared to older LCD displays of the past.
Handling.

Basically after going thru the D80 and the D40, what owners of the D200 and D300 pay for is not so much image quality performance but the ability to change settings quickly and not have to rely on chimping the top and rear LCDs. The D200 design is accepted the world over as amazingly intuitive by putting dedicated buttons on every major camera control feature needed by advanced photographers. It has allowed me to shoot faster, and not miss anything important when I’m covering events. Indeed if there was one thing that still confuses me about using the D200 was the un-intuitive way of displaying images, by using shift-combos of buttons, dials and multi-selector I found myself just not previewing images at all in the field and just sort it out later when I upload it to the computer. The D80 and the D40 is much better at it which I think is good because these models are tailored for consumers which really don’t want to know every feature of their gear but must be intuitive enough not to get in their way.

I’m proud to say that previewing and displaying images on the D300 has been vastly improved. No more shift combos. It’s as easy as the D80 and the D40 with additional features to keep trigger happy shooters willing and able to shuffle their images in the camera even if It’s stuffed with files from captures.

The other major change is the removal of the bracket button. I thought it was a concern because I like to use bracketing when I shoot outdoors. However, this concern was also addressed by moving it to one of the FUNC buttons so it now has to share it with the FV Lock feature. To be honest, it’s not a big deal because it’s rare that one shoots in a situation where one brackets and needs FV lock at the same time. But if you are one of the few who need it, the D300 allows you to customize 2 FUNC buttons for this purpose.

New Features

The most important new feature this camera offers in my opinion is the 51 point AF system that prior to this model was reserved only for Nikon’s professional DSLRs like the D2h/s and the D2X/s which one had to fork over serious cash to be able to have.

Truth be told, I wasn’t too crazy upgrading to the D2X because I felt the price tag was too prohibitive for me and I am not a fan of big DSLRs with chunky battery grips because I prefer to travel and would like to carry lenses more with the less weight the D200 afforded me.

The biggest change in using a camera with so many focus points is that one no longer needs to purposely put your main subject in one of the pre-positioned and fixed points in the viewfinder. With so many focus points, one can sense that moving the focus point selector is like seeing one floating in your viewfinder and it can go diagonally in any direction the same way a queen moves in a chess board.

And once you switch to using the new 3D tracking feature, all one needs is to get your main subject in a focus point and keep watching it track your subject no matter where he is, it’s like a crosshair in a video game and it seemed like the camera is trying to shoot the subject to oblivion.

The next more impressive feature I value in the D300 is one of the main reasons I got the camera in the first place. I prefer to shoot outdoors, at any time of day or night, and prefer to not have to lug a tripod. I know it seems extreme, but in the past I was able to comfortably do this when I was using the Canon 30D with a 50mm F1.8. My first love using DSLRs was shooting for the college paper and even though I’m not as brave as true professional photojournalists, I still like to take pictures of life around me in a candid manner.

I really don’t care what Nikon did to make this possible, but trust me it’s now possible. All I know is I am now confident of shooting at ISO1600 and ISO3200 if I must. The reason the images you see on the internet using a D300 at ISO3200 seems so bloody good is because they are ALL resized for web use (72dpi and less than 2MP). Viewing ISO 3200 images at 100% on a monitor at home is still bad in my humble opinion and I would NOT even print them anything bigger than 5R (maybe I’m just too demanding now). I think the high ISO performance maybe because of the EXPEED signal processor they use but it can’t make up for small photosites compared to the D3 or even the hugely successful Canon 5D. I have shot some instances where I could see boo-boos made by the EXPEED when it tries to reduce noise at high ISO however the instance is very specific and I don’t want to start another internet mob war by pointing it out. All one needs to know is that it exists (EXPEED isn’t perfect) but I will wait for more credible authors to point it out later.

Picture Controls is also a notable new feature. Unlike the old Optimize Image system used in prior releases, the system is a lot more flexible. It’s like Nikon created the standard sets we’re used to (like Normal, Portrait, Vivid) but enhanced them by making each one customizable, save-able and export-able. In a nutshell, groups of shooters working in teams can share the same rendition setups and work as a group differing only in composition choice and opportunities to shoot. I’m sure this will be a great feature for wedding and event shooters who want to submit a wider variety of images to clients yet having all the same color renditions.

These other notable features aren’t new, basically they are knock-offs from other Nikon/Canon/Olympus models;

-    Sensor Cleaning (pioneered by Olympus)
-    Live View (pioneered by Olympus)
-    D-Lighting (originally introduced first in the D80)
-    MyMenu (originally introduced first in the D80)

Whether these are better or not really depends whether one needs it. Personally, except for D-Lighting these features don’t really affect image quality so I don’t want to dwell on them.

Performance.

The tricky thing about performance is that it’s really subjective. I really don’t think one camera is better than another because performance for me is still dependent to a greater degree by the one behind the camera. So I guess if you wanna judge performance, just scour the net for images using the D300 and if you think those images are the ones you admire and want to do yourself then by all means get one.

All I know is that I can shoot one of the most demanding genres of photography… sports and full ambient street photography and I don’t know of any other DSLR that can do this without going for a full PRO spec’ed DSLR.

A big heartfelt welcome to the Nikon D300. Thanks for stirring up the pot again. I’m sure other camera manufacturers won’t make the same mistake of resting on their laurels and produce evolutionary products when what the buying public wants is revolutionary improvements. And if Nikon continues on delighting it’s loyal owners with revolutionary upgrades to it’s DSLRs, then I’m happy to keep giving them my cash.

With the permission of Dave Deluria to repost.

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