Played with it today for about an hour or so - I am in love It is a factory reconditioned product and apart from a few scratches on the screen protector it looks brand new. I upgraded from a D50 to the D300. My early observations: 1. Feels really solid - balances beautifully with my 70-200 F2.8 lens. The D50 is too small and not as ergonomic - my hands used to hurt after some time. 2. Love the directly accessible options - particularly the focus, metering, ISO. No more scrolling through menus to fiddle with it 3. The Auto ISO range is neat feature - can set a min/max ISO and shutter speed level. But I still am going to go with the manual ISO for now. 4. The low noise sensor is fantastic. ISO 200-1600 is virtually noise free. 3200 is eminently usable. ISO 6400 and ISO 100 are not that good. Avoid it. The D50 was great at ISO 200 but became mediocre by 1SO 800 from a noise/sharpness standpoint. The D300 gives me effectively 3 stops benefit. 5. Superb menus - lots of configuration capabilities organized quite logically. I am glad I started off with the D50 and not jumped in straight to the D300 - the menus would be very intimidating to a newbie. I think I am at the 60% comprehension level on the first day and am looking forward to learning the remaining 40%. 6. The matrix metering is more accurate than the D50 which would tend to overexpose a bit. 7. The 51 point autofocus works great - locks on focus very quickly. Caveat: I was trying it primarily on static objects - would need to try on a race track to figure out how it really works. 8. Am not too happy with the strap provided - it might kill my back on a day long shoot with a F2.8 lens. I think I will put some foam on it to ease up the strain. 9. Live view seems to be a gimmick. 10. Depth of field preview is gimmick. 11. Really LOVE the sharp LCD display and 100% viewfinder - should undoubtedly lead to better accuracy. on the D50, I sometimes was not sure if the image was sharp or not - the screen was really blurry by comparison to the D300. 12. Love the ability to save JPEGs using optimal quality and not just size like the D50. Overall it feels like I jumped from a 2002 Audi A4 to a 2009 Ferrari Scuderia. (The D3(s) is the McLaren F1 of the camera world).
First picture - whole image cropped to 1600* 1200 resolution. No other changes done. Second picture - I focused on the round barrel (fuel tank?). Picture is not too sharp Last picture - out of focus region - see the noise (pink dots and overall blurriness) Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
First picture - whole image cropped to 1600* 1200 resolution. No other changes done. Second picture - I focused on the round barrel (fuel tank?). Picture is really sharp Last picture - out of focus region - virtually no noise and pretty sharp. Overall the images are less over-exposed compared to the D50 Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
First picture - whole image cropped to 1600* 1200 resolution. No other changes done. Second picture - I focused on the round barrel (fuel tank?). Slight loss of detail compared to 1600 but damn good otherwise. No discernible noise here Last picture - out of focus region - Noise starts to creep in but image is pretty sharp. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
First picture - whole image cropped to 1600* 1200 resolution. No other changes done. Second picture - I focused on the round barrel (fuel tank?). sharper than D50 at 1600 but only to be used in an emergency Last picture - out of focus region - noise and artifacts. Still better than the D50 at 1600. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
D 300 Owner here also, keep 'em coming. Consider a Nikonians course if they come in your area. I did an 8hr D300 seminar where I learned a ton I didn't know about the camera. Cost $175.
