Nikon D300 Body Only

Product Information

Apart from the EOS 7D, the Pentax K-7 is a compelling, if flawed mid-range contender, but the only area in which it unarguably betters the D300s is in terms of resolution, offering 14, as opposed to 12 million pixels. I’m in a fortunate position where I am never short of a new camera – it is one of the privileges of my job. However, the one camera that I would buy, should it materialise, would be the D400. It has been almost seven years since the D300 was released, and five years since the D300S, so it would seem the D400 is long overdue. Like the D90 and D5000 before it, the D300s’s movie mode also suffers from motion artefacts often referred to as wobble, skew or jello. This is a well-known issue with CMOS sensors with rolling shutters which record each frame from top to bottom before returning to the top again for the next one. Should the camera or subject move during this process, the image can appear to tear, skew or wobble. Now many video cameras, both amateur and professional, employ CMOS sensors, but some suffer more from this effect than others. In the D300, Nikon has a camera that will appeal to a wide range of photographers, from advanced amateurs to professionals looking for a cheaper and slightly lighter alternative to the D3. It has class-leading build quality and ergonomic design, a mind-boggling array of features and options, blistering performance and superb image quality. In terms of what it has to offer the D300 is unquestionably one of the four or five best cameras currently on the market. However it is a very expensive camera, and the competition – in the shape of the Sony A700 – isn’t far behind.

The out-of-camera JPEGs are in fact quite sharp at the default settings if you use a sharp lens to begin with, but shots taken at maximum aperture often benefit from some further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop. Alternatively you can change the in-camera sharpening level to suit your tastes. Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some extra sharpening applied. The Imatest chart shows good colour accuracy with the blues a little cool and the reds slightly saturated. On the other hand, the D90 has a higher DXOMARK score for its sensor, scoring 73 compared to the D300’s 67. A higher DXOMARK score means that the D90’s sensor performs better in terms of color depth, dynamic range, and low-light performance. This advantage may appeal to photographers who prioritize image quality over shooting speed.Key to the Nikon D300s specification is its 12.3-million-pixel CMOS sensor, which is the same unit as that fitted to the D300, and (minor tweaks notwithstanding) the D90 and D5000. Its ISO sensitivity range spans ISO 200-3200, with ‘lo’ and ‘hi’ extension settings adding ISO 100 and 6400 (equivalent) to the range. However, obviously the sensor in the D300s does something that its predecessor could not – it records video footage. Nikon D300s Video As we can see from the images of AP’s test chart above, the Nikon D300s offers excellent resolution for its pixel count, on a par with the best of its 12-million-pixel com petition. At low ISO settings the D300s can also compete with the full-frame D700 and D3, although as the sensitivity is pushed higher, performance drops off a little.

File formats include JPEG, TIFF, NEF (Nikon's raw image format compressed and uncompressed), and JPEG+NEF (JPEG size/quality selectable)Built-in Speedlight offers balanced fill-flash with Nikon's i-TTL flash system, and can fire in commander mode for wireless off-camera firing of other speedlights; controlling up to two groups of speedlights with individual exposure compensation However, in the past few days Canon has released the as yet untested EOS 7D and Sony has discontinued the Alpha 700. My Nikon D300 has been through a few scrapes. On returning from Vancouver one year, I opened my hand luggage to find that the directional control on the rear of the camera had snapped off, no doubt after someone had crammed a bag against mine. A repair from Nikon sorted this out, but there were two repairs I made myself. So is a revamped AF system and new, even more user-friendly interface enough to make first-time DSLR buyers part with their cash? Or does the D3000 pale before live-view equipped competitors like the Canon EOS 1000D and Olympus E-450? Despite the lower score, the Nikon D90 offers a lighter and more compact option for photographers on a budget. It provides similar performance at a lower price point, making it a suitable choice for those prioritizing cost and portability.

The D3000 is pretty closely related to the D5000. There are important differences though, which are detailed here. An extra 2.1Mp have been crammed into the sensor, making the D300 a 12.3Mp camera with a new EXSPEED processor doing the work of sorting all the signals out. This has considerably improved the amount of noise visible in images and makes the camera usable at far higher ISO settings than its predecessors. Conversely, the camera has lost the ISO100 setting as standard although it can still be achieved as a ‘Low 1.0' setting. It is also faster at the job, giving the camera a frame rate of 6fps in its standard form. Battery continuity is another plus point from the design, with the same EN-EL3e batteries from the D200/D80 being the standard in the body. For optimal resolution, however, shooting in the NEF (raw) format and applying careful noise reduction and sharpening is the best option. This workflow is more labour-intensive, but with a little care and attention the D300s can deliver excellent, highly detailed results right up to its maximum ISO sensitivity setting.

EN-EL3e lithium-ion battery 7.4V/1500 MAH offering up to 1800 shots per charge, according to Nikon; with advanced battery information available in camera menus This was taken with the D-Lighting set to maximum. As you can see it has rescued a lot of shadow detail while maintaining the highlights. Center-weighted: Weight of 75% given to 6, 8, 10, or 13 mm dia. circle in center of frame or weighting based on average of entire frame (8 mm circle when non-CPU lens is used) I've never said this before of any other camera, but the D300 actually makes it easier to create significantly better images than with earlier cameras. Live View is no longer treated as a drive mode option, and is thus no longer accessed via the release mode dial. Instead, it now has a dedicated button on the rear panel – a logical and welcome improvement over the D300, although it's one of only two buttons that we feel are a little too recessed to operate easily (the other one is the also-new Info button). Live View comes in two flavours, 'Hand-held' and 'Tripod'. In 'Hand-held' mode, you can use either the AF-ON button or a half-press of the shutter release to initiate autofocus, whereby the mirror is lowered and the AF sensors are engaged. This interrupts the live view, which does not even resume automatically when focus is acquired; only when you let go of the shutter release (or AF-ON) button. The whole procedure is cumbersome and involves lots of mirror slapping, but at the end of the day, it's still the faster way if you want to use AF in live view. Because in the aptly named 'Tripod' mode, it takes a lot more time for the camera to acquire focus, as it uses a contrast-detect method which Nikon's lenses are not optimised for. The undeniable advantage of this mode is that focusing does not interrupt the live view feed, and there is less mirror slapping. Note though that in 'Tripod' mode, you can only use the AF-ON button for autofocus; there is no other option.

Like the D5000, though, I would not advise using automatic focus when shooting video. With the in-built monoaural microphone activated, the handling and AF noises are overpowering, and even with an external microphone plugged in the incessant fidgeting of the D300s’s contrast-detection AF makes for jerky footage if you need to refocus the scene. Our verdict Like the D3, the D300 isn’t just a camera, but part of a complete Nikon system to help photographers create great images. The D300 is compatible with the Nikon Total Imaging System of NIKKOR lenses, Speedlights, accessories and software that provides a complete solution for any photographic challenge. Of all my photographs, though, it was when travelling that I really put my D300 through its paces. I’ve been to Barcelona, Rome, Venice, Berlin, Cologne, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Malta, Greece, New York, and to Vancouver five times, and the D300 has always been my faithful travelling companion. On February 14, 2008, Nikon released a firmware upgrade which resolves an issue where vertical banding can occur when long exposure noise reduction is enabled for shutter speeds of 8 seconds and slower. [17]

Specifications

Another extended ISO range shot, this time at 6400 ISO. There is quite a lot of noise, and colour saturation is also affected.