Nikon D300 Body Only

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Editorial reviews

Product Description
Just under two years since the D200 Nikon reveals the D300, the range of changes is so significant that it wouldn't be inappropriate to call it a 'compact D3' (less the full-frame sensor of course). From the top there's a new CMOS sensor with twelve megapixels, a new auto-focus sensor with 51-points (15 of which are cross-type sensitive), there's focus tracking by color, scene recognition, Picture Control presets, six frames per second continuous shooting (or eight frames per second with a battery pack), Compact Flash UDMA support, Live View (with contrast detect AF) and the mighty impressive 3.0" 922,000 pixel LCD monitor (oh and HDMI video output). It's an impressive list, the D200 was a fair step up from the D100, the D300 can be seen as just as big a step, certainly more than enough to make the competition sweat.

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-11-19 rating:
Superb DSLR in every way!!
Well, I started out a few years back with the humble D40 and have now progressed onto shooting professionally on a part-time basis.

What a camera!!!

I cover a variety of fields including motorsport events, portraiture and weddings. I have to say, I expected the D300 to be good but to have it in one's hands and learn how to use all the amazing features is just mind blowing. This cam rocks!!!

One feels so much more in control:

1. 51 point autofocus - fast and accurate, you get pin-sharp images even under dynamic situations. The 3D tracking is brill for fast moving subjects like cars going all out on track!!

2. White Balance - the AUTO setting is just so much more clever than lesser bodies. Pretty much use it all the time with little amounts of PP adjustment required in most cases. The manual Kelvin (colour temp) adjustment facility is also good to have.

3. ISO - wow, wow, wow... I never thought I was able to shoot at something like ISO1600 and produce printable images - I can now!! Thanks to the CMOS sensor which produces much less noise, location shoots with low levels of light aren't a problem anymore and I can use smaller apetures which gives me so much more flexibility.

4. Speed - 6 fps as standard is damn quick - enough for my needs.

5. Active D-Lighting - another great feature from Nikon. High contrast shots are now so much better and manageable with Active D-Lighting. You will love this!!

There's much, much more on offer not to mention a fantastic body design with sturdy build quality.

I can't recommend this camera more highly and will treasure what it has to offer for many years to come :O)

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review by: from east date: 2008-10-28 rating:
Review: D300 from the D80 perspective
Until recently I had a Nikon D80 and I also wrote a review about it. So I think it would be useful for you, D80 owners and D300 prospect buyers, to have some clues about what this D300 is about from a former D80 user. I will update my review as I'll be getting into more and more of this camera.

First noticeable difference is the size. The D300 is bigger and heavier than the D80, but the size it is not a problem for mid-sized hands like mine are. About weight: I bought a neoprene strap some time ago for my D80. I use it also on the D300. The strap which is included with the camera is a bit too rough for my skin and the weight of camera can be a real pain if you carry it on too long. Any neoprene strap will do, just choose one which is a bit more elastic and has a smooth internal layer (touch it, it is important to do that BEFORE you buy it).

You won't notice any important difference in the feeling of the grip size, although it is a bit bulkier, because the body has been reshaped in the back of the camera so it is easy to hold it even with one hand. On the back, there is a handy AF-ON button which is completely in the reach of your thumb and the AE-L/ AF-L button is not far from it either. The body has a rubbery feel which is different than the D80 (more plastic) and lays comfortable in your hands giving you the sensation of a good grip.

Controls: One thing that annoys most photographers is to have to lower the camera from their eyes very often when they change some settings. You will not have a mode dial, like in D80, just a button and only 4 modes that will be displayed in the viewfinder; this is a pro camera, the amateur-like modes (portrait, night etc) are gone. It will be very nice for you to know that you don't have to change white balance, ISO and picture quality settings by looking at the back of the camera (like on the D80) to find the buttons. They are on the top, like on D200, which I think it is very convenient because they are arranged in a triangle shape and you can get to your needed button without removing the camera from your eye, because you will remember quite quickly the location of each button: front the quality, left the white balance, right the ISO. Moreover, ISO setting is displayed in the viewfinder and you'll be quite amazed to find how useful this little feature is ! On the D80 I had to use and push the custom function button to see this or to look on top, on the LCD display. On top right are only two buttons: to the left is the mode, to the right is the exposure compensation (use this with caution with matrix metering). Voila, with four buttons you control the most important settings for taking pictures, and, best of all, you know their location without having to look at them. What needs special attention is the release mode dial, is the one you have to look at when changing modes. The rest of lever controls have only three positions so it's very easy to know which one position is which.

The build quality is outstanding, it looks and feels like a tank. Remember that, with camera, you are getting an environmental sealing which is not the case for the D80/40/40x. Combine that with a sealed lens like the 17-55DX f/2.8 and you'll gone have a very nice combo even in bad weather. Is that important ? Yes, it is. Otherwise you have to take care all the time and protect your camera from water drops, dust and snowflakes. The sound of the shutter is softer (more silent) than on the D80, probably because of some other materials were used for building the mirror holder and the shutter.

ISO, noise: The noise at high ISO is outstanding. When I purchased the D80 I found myself very often wanting to shoot in lowlight conditions and I got a Nikon SB800 for that. However, using flash to some extent annoys people and high ISO was mandatory in such situations. Now you can use ISO 3200 with 100% confidence and getting low noise, well-detailed photos with good saturated colors will be a rule. ISO 1600 is almost noise free, you can see it at pixel peeping but for prints it is non-existent. More important than low noise is detail preservation at high ISO. The 2 more megapixels also help. What helps most on the field is the Auto ISO feature, something that I have never used on the D80. I took shots using a minimum shutter speed of 1/50 s and ISO as high as 2000. That gives you a very wide range of exposure options without being afraid of noise and lost details. One advice, though: be sure to set high ISO noise reduction to low or none (in the menus). You can always remove any noise with a software but never can recover lost details. For noise removal I strongly recommend Nik Software Dfine 2.0 plugin for Adobe Photoshop or Imagenomics Noiseware. In my opinion, the ISO 3200 is a blessing. That means you can take photos in rooms lit with 60W light bulbs without having to cry for blotchy images. If on the D80 ISO 3200 was good (in my opinion) for 6x4 prints and black and white larger images, with D300 you can go far beyond that. Image quality wise, ISO 6400 on the D300 is almost on par with ISO 1600 on the D80, and, more important, using a noise reduction software you can get very good looking images out of ISO 6400 pictures.

Metering: no more complaints for "matrix overexposure" fans, although I always felt that this "overexposure" is more related to poor usage of this metering mode on the D80. On D300, the matrix is spot on, and you'll like it as much as I do, on sunny, cloudy, evening and artificial light, including the TTL mode on flash.

Focus: this will hit you. Actually nobody could understand (neither did I) what a pro-level focusing system means until you'll be using one. No more hit and miss, no more problems on portrait compositions, no more problems of focusing with AF points other than the central one. The settings menu will give you a plethora of possible focus combinations, and memory banks to save your settings for quick selection. When you'll get your D300, do this test: on continuous servo high speed, track a car. You could make a movie with those sharp images.

Colors: I have a habbit, I always shoot in Adobe RGB mode. It is the best way to do when you are after the most color information from one scene. Moreover, even if you have aRGB jpegs, you can always assign a different lower-gamut profile in Adobe Photoshop CS3 or other image editing software. The colors ARE different than the D80's: closer to the warm side of the spectrum, gone is the sometime-magenta cast that you once noticed on your D80 especially under bright sun. The colors ARE PERFECT. So perfect that you can distinguish between subtle tonalities on flowers, skin tones and complexions, to a much better extent than with the D80. The shadows won't have any bluish creep anymore, dark is dark, black is black, maroon is maroon etc. Even at high ISO, the noise is more luminance than bluish. Again, you have a entire army of in-camera settings for colors, brilliance, contrast, hue ... you can customize your preferences for image rendition, you can save more than neutral-vivid-black and white modes personal settings for color and luminance settings. There is only one single exception to this perfection which you have to consider: when using dynamic D-lighting mode, colors tend to get more saturated as high as you get with your D-lightings settings. On RAWs (NEFs) this is easily corrected in your raw processing software, but on jpegs and tiffs, quite difficult.

RAW mode: Please, please use Nikon Capture NX2 Software for Windows and Mac or ACR from Adobe Photoshop. The results with Lightroom are horrendous in terms of noise reduction. I don't know why, it should have the same RAW engine as Photoshop CS3. UPDATE: These problems seem to come from preproduction firmware NEFs. I found no more problems opening NEFs in Lightroom with a production firmware camera.

Please remember that the first 300.000 D300 sold also have a license for Capture NX included in the box (I also got it) so you won't have to spend on licenss. I like the way this software renders colors and noise even if it does not have the most impressive interface one ever built. One more advantage with Capture NX 1.3: you have a new "Picture Control" menu under "Camera Settings" which you can use to add custom picture settings to the D300 (and name them as you want "less vivid", "more neutral" etc) and a custom-curve editor that you can use to add more control to your custom picture preset. Moreover, the 1.3 version of NX picture control options come with some D2x-image-like presets that are great for rendering skin tones in portraits.

Memory Card: if you shoot in 14-bit mode (recommended if you shoot RAW or TIFF and have to shoot high dynamic scenes), please remember that the RAW files, uncompressed, are somewhere around 25 MB each. Get a fast card. I bought a SanDisk 4 GB Extreme IV CompactFlash Card, that supports 40MB/s transfer. It runs smoothly, the camera buffer will not clog. Take care: 25 MB NEF file will stress your computer out and squeeze all resources from it. You need at least 2 GB of RAM (I have 4), and a fast processor. I have a Core2Duo 6300 plus win XP 64 bit edition to avoid RAM limitation. Update May 7, 2008: I bought also a 8GB 300x UDMA Lexar CF card to have another CF card for my camera and it seems to me that the write and read speed on the Lexar is inferior to the Sandisk Ultra IV. So my advice is to stick with Sandisk.

I won't go into details, but I just want you to know that I have this camera for less than 24 hours, I already shot >100 photos (Update May 7, 2008: >3,000 photos; no hotspots, dead pixels, nada), and I love all of them. It is a perfect upgrade for my needs.

Promise to come back with further news.

Update (22 Jan 2008 - after two months of use):
No problems whatsoever. The camera works like a charm. I'm delighted.

Update (7 May 2008):
No problems encountered. Meanwhile I purchased a Voigtlander APO Lanthar 90mm f/3.5 for Nikon which is an amazing lens - manual focusing - for its price, and a Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM Lens which is quite a fun to use a get photos with it. Is nice to have the added possibility of using metering with an AIS-like lens.

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review by: date: 2008-10-11 rating:
I couldn't be more pleased...
I've had three months of intensive use of the D300 before writing this review. Straight out of the box I thought it was wonderful, but would I still feel the same way after I'd used it for a range of photographic subjects and conditions?

The answer is a resounding YES. Everything about this camera is perfect - from the bright view, the ease of changing the lenses, the simplicity of the controls, the feel of the camera in the hands - just perfect. The images I've taken have been universally excellent, whether macro photographs of natural subjects, fish-eye landscapes or portrait shots, there's nothing an enthusiastic amateur can't achieve.

When it comes to accessories, the D300 also doesn't disappoint, with the range and quality of everything I've bought for it being outstanding.

The quality of any photograph is the combination of camera, subject and photographer. With the D300, one of those is perfection - the other two are up to you.

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review by: date: 2008-10-09 rating:
Will knock the socks off you for performance!!!
I have had the benefit of owning a D200 immediately before this. This beauty blows the D200 in to smithereens in terms of quality, function and speed of response. I think the extra 2Mega pixels do make the difference. I was always slightly disappointed with the quality the D200 had to offer. In many situations the focus would be slightly out and on enlargement this was apparent. I don't find that with the D300. I don't know if its because I never found it but the D300 also has the facility to compensate for minor errors in focussing and you can set this for each individual lens. The focussing is perhaps a little slower but there are many great positives this camera has.

I was delighted to upgrade, and this was only after 8 months with a D200. I wish I had never bought the D200 now and plumped for the D300 straight off. I can guarantee you will not be disappointed with this camera. It is stunning, and will give you the ability to take some breathtaking photos.


review by: date: 2008-07-19 rating:
A switch to confidence
I'd only had my D300 for about 5 minutes and was just so amazed by the solid, confident feel of the camera. I changed from my somewhat underpowered Canon EOS20D and found the D300 a confidence inspiring piece of kit. The on board editing, especially the Active D Lighting edit facility, makes life so much easier. You can pick this up, flick it to 'P' and fire away safe in the knowledge that you'll get a decent shot. A word of warning though to anyone used to a camera with a full auto setting. This doesn't have one, so if you don't have a good knowledge of how a camera works and how to use ISO, shutter and apeture to gain the results you need, then you'll spend a great deal of time reading the manual. But this is a pro camera isn't it!
The screen is awesome. Huge and with superb detail. The menu system is pretty extensive but fairly easy to follow if you understand it all.
It's a great camera,and one which will feel equally at home in the hands of a keen amatuer on a day trip with the family and kids, as it will with the pro sports photographer and studio luvvie!
I use mine when I take the kids out the park to e-mail photos to Nan and Grandad, and then when I need it for work, on goes the battery grip, big fast lens and it performs each and every time.

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Accessories

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