Should I get a Nikon D300?

[Richard G.]

The rumour sites had been running the D300s spec for a while, but still can't help feeling pretty disappointed now that it's all confirmed . As a D80 user, it's been apparent for a while that a body upgrade would greatly improve my chances of getting good results in wildlife shooting, though to be fair, the D80 takes a great landscape.

So, is it worth my while going for the D300s or am I better saving £350 with a D300? I know many of you D300 users will be in no hurry to upgrade to the D300s, but cast your minds back to your pre-D300 days. No sign of a price reduction in the D300 either though and not sure this will happen in the short term.

There seem to be a couple of minor measurable improvements on the D300s, like the extra FPS in continuous, and some immeasurable in the faster, more accurate focusing and metering, doubt there'd be much, if any, improvement in noise handling though?

Unfortunately, I can't afford or justify upgrading every 12-18 months, so if I jump now, it means I probably won't be in a position to upgrade to the D400, if it arrives within that timeframe, so I suppose sitting it out for another 12 months drumming my fingers is another option?

Aaarrrggghhh…. decisions, decisions….

[Tobyh]

I can only give you my experience Richard.

I upgraded from a D50 to a D300. There were a few things I particularly wanted:-

Mirror Lock-up
Higher FPS
Improved noise handling

The D300 really delivered for me. The difference in the FPS seemed alot and the noise handling is excellent. Would I have bought a D300s had I been in same position now. Probably not if I'm honest. I'd rather buy a seperate Video Recorder for that job.

I guess the question is do you feel that the D80 is holding you back? Would the improvements overall justify the cost now, rather than waiting? Which part of the "greatly improve my chances of getting good results in wildlife shooting" are you referring to in particular? Is that something you really feel is holding you back or just an annoyance?

Personally I wouldn't even consider a D300s for myself, I just couldn't justify the cost from a standard D300 - would rather put the money towards better glass.

TobyH

[Richard G.]

Well, I'm primarily a landscape shooter and wildlife is a fairly recent departure for me. The D80 still does everything I need for landscapes, it's low ISO performance is good, metering and DR are OK, but not outstanding, I can make pretty good A3 prints.

But for wildlife the 11-point AF often means re-composing after focusing, noise above ISO400 is unacceptable, AF is also pretty slow, so tracking moving subjects is hard to impossible and at 3 FPS continuous shooting just doesn't increase my chances of getting one sharp image from a burst, it usually means one OOF image and one empty frame

I often think a few more pixels would be nice and would allow more cropping without interpolation for prints (16MP has always been my magic number), MLU, though nice, is not essential, video is irrelevant. So my wish list is mostly better/faster and more flexible AF (I hear the D300 Auto-Area AF is pretty good?), more accurate metering, bit more DR, more FPS and most importantly the better high-ISO noise handling.

I suppose both the models would give me these things (and the only glass I'm saving for, and this is imaginary saving you understand , is the 200-400mm f/4 ). I've also sunk a fair amount into DX glass now, so FF is really not a consideration.

So this why I’m wondering if my choice is really D300 now or wait for the D400 and potentially miss out on another 12 months of opportunities. And the spare £350 could go towards the stupidly expensive grip I suppose, which is something I like and am used to on my D80.

[pressld2]

Hi Richard,

I'm very similar to Toby in that I upgraded from a D70 to the D300 back in Feb 2008.

The biggest thing for me was the increase from 6.1 to 12.3 megapixels. I was particularly keen on this as I wanted to submit stock libraries and agencies and the D70 limited my options in that regard. Several agencies do not consider it a professional camera and won't accept images taken with it and many others insist on minimum size originals which meant that if I needed to crop an image it was no longer any good for submission. Your D80 is 10.2 megapixels to start with so this won't be such a big jump for you.

The other things that interested me were the continuous shooting frame rate and the high ISO performance.

The burst rate is very fast but as it turns out I hardly ever use it. I've been shooting in 14bit raw since last December and this reduces the burst rate to about 3 frames per second anyway.

I may be overly fussy but I still don't think the high ISO performance is very impressive and still won't go above ISO 400 unless I'm desperate. The only shot I've taken higher than 400 that I really like is this one...



...where the noise adds to the misty atmosphere (in my opinion).

The D300's autofocus system is superb and the metering is more accurate than the D70 - I used to have +0.7 ev permanently set on that camera and sometimes had to go higher. I do use the mirror lock-up facility and the live-view occasionally too, neither of which were on the D70.

All in all I think the D300 is a superb camera and is still the best one that Nikon make for wildlife photography at the amateur/enthusiast level. If I were upgrading today I would go for the D300 as there's nothing in the D300S that would justify the extra espense for me.

I doubt that I'll be upgrading again until they bring out a body with a DX sensor that matches the ISO noise performance of the D3/D700 full frame sensors. I can't think of any other area where a significant improvement could be made. Video capture is not on my wish list and never will be!

Dave P.

[liam71]

You could consider the D200. I own this camera and it is excellent. A worthy alternative to the D300 and better in user feature than the D90. True, It doesn't have the big 3" screen or the increase in pixels, or the better high ISO capabilities of the D90.

You Can get a good D200 with a battery grip for £450-530 on ebay, Then go and buy a good second-hand Sigma 50mm 2.8 EX Macro with the change.

Good luck with whatever you purchase.

[Richard G.]

Interesting experiences Dave, and the pony shot doesn't look that noisy to me at all, what was the ISO?

As much as anything, I'm just frustrated with my situation. It's very easy to keep putting off upgrades, because there's always another model coming down the road, but I had gambled on the D400 coming this year and so my gamble has failed. But then you think it must come in the next 12 months, so just sit tight a bit longer, in the meantime the shooting opportunities just keep slipping by.

When the D300 was released I'd not had the D80 that long, and I was really happy with it, so didn't consider the D300 for a second. But once I started trying to shoot wildlife, it became much more desirable. Of course now I wish I'd bought the D300 12 months ago, when I first started lusting after a new body.

Obvious why it's a closely guarded secret, but I really wish I knew the Nikon roadmap for the next 3 years or so...

[pressld2]

Originally Posted by Richard G.

Interesting experiences Dave, and the pony shot doesn't look that noisy to me at all, what was the ISO?

That one was at ISO800. I've applied some noise reduction in Lightroom and then it's been resized from the 4288 x 2848 original down to 900 x 600 for uploading here. That's less than 1/20th original size so the noise is much less obvious. As an A3 or larger print the noise would be noticeable.

I'd love to know when the next generation DX sensor will be out - that may or may not be in the D400 when it comes. But it's also possible that we've already reached the limits of noise reduction in terms of the physical sensor and all future improvements will be in the processing software.

Dave P.

[RichBrew]

Originally Posted by Richard G.

...so just sit tight a bit longer, in the meantime the shooting opportunities just keep slipping by.

Get the D300 and shoot images. Spend the remainder of your budget on the MB-D10 grip. It improves handling and offers 8 frames per second should you need it.

RichBrew

[NicolaB]

I can also recommend the D300, I've got no complaints with mine at all, and I've been fairly happy with the performance at high ISO's. I don't really see much justification in going for a D300s unless you want the video shooting, which personally I don't!!

This shot was taken at ISO 1600, just for interest There's only a small bit of noise evident in the darker areas of the background, and I personally don't think it's that bad or obvious.

[pressld2]

Originally Posted by pressld2

I may be overly fussy but I still don't think the high ISO performance is very impressive and still won't go above ISO 400 unless I'm desperate.

Okay, I'm now going to eat humble pie and promise never to say that again. I must remember that raw means raw - it doesn't do any in-camera processing of the image. This includes high ISO noise reduction. It leaves everything to the photographer to do in the raw conversion process.

The trouble is that either the noise reduction in Lightroom v1.4 is not very good or I don't know how to use it properly. The upshot is that when shooting in raw above ISO 400 I get noisy images and find it impossible to reduce the noise in post-processing without losing image detail.

I remember working all this out shortly after getting the camera and experimenting with shooting in jpeg and also using Capture NX for the raw conversion - both of which produced significantly better results. See My D300.... I finished that post by saying "I just need to go out and play a lot more". But I didn't do that - I just set the camera back to raw and carried on shooting at ISO 200 with the occasional blip up to 400.

So, inspired by Nicola's excellent ISO 1600 treecreeper, I nipped out this evening and shot a few images of my own at that speed. I was going to shoot in jpeg but then rememebered that the D300 has tiff setting so I used that instead.

Here's a black swan (black being the colour that shows noise the most)...



...and here's a 100% crop from that image...



There's a slight softening of the image when viewed at 100% but the noise control is excellent.

I'm going to have "When shooting at ISO 1600 use tiff" tattooed on the inside of my eyeballs so I don't forget this lesson again!

Dave P.