Testing a D300

So, today I went down to Fixation UK to test out a nice used D300 and almost bought it - except that I had misread the print and only realized that the price on offer was without VAT - the UK version of GST if you will, at 15%....

Gah.

Anyways, many who I've spoken to will probably know that I am waiting for the price of the D300 to drop to about 1k SGD before I buy it - I bought my D200, plus grip, for AUD 850 after all. 17k shutter count (it's about 90k now, at the very least - 1k shots a week? I shot about 14gbs of raws last weekend over two days ;-) ). The reason I'm looking for a D300 now is two fold. First, I really like the 300/4 AF-S (in general - I hate the bokeh it delivers at times) - it has one of the best close focusing telephotos I have - 1.45 metres from the focal plane. This is similar to the 70-300VR, except that the image quality of the 300/4 just surpasses it totally. If only Nikon would make a 300/4 VR version, I would be in wolf heaven. As much as I would love to tote around a 300/2.8VR, er... that lens alone can probably buy up my entire setup. But the 300/4 is relatively slow at F4 compared to er... say the canon 50mm F1.0 (ok so that is a lame comparison) - so I'm hoping the 1 stop plus ISO boost will help get more shots in the evenings and dark enclosures.

Secondly, I will be visiting the Highland Wildlife Park soon for a two day photographic shoot - wolves and all sort of highland critters - hopefully in the snow. This is a really rare opportunity (for me anyways. If I worked for say, Axis Animation up in Glasglow I'll probably be there shooting wolves every weekend, like Cleland Wildlife Park when I was with RSP ;-) ) - so I want to make the best use of it to pull as much IQ as possible.

So I did some test shots with the camera, and played around with it for a little bit. The controls are almost exactly the same as the D200, so stepping up to it was damned easy. Even the custom functions were very straight forward - first thing I did was to disable the half shutter AF - I use af-on technique for shooting - and it was exactly where it is in the menu ;-)

The shutter on the D300 is manly. Damn it sounds good. Tried the 51 point 3d tracking autofocusing again. (my second time playing with a d300 btw) and I am still impressed how it can put a correct AF point on an object. I think in real life use this feature isn't that awesome (so I read), but still I think this is just too cool. The on demand grid lines are still there - so damned convenient.

The screen is amazing. Just amazing. One day, I'm sure they'll be able to put in a 1080P screen and we can all watch Up on blu ray on the D999ZHD2BLR. (Up rocks btw, I really liked the rainbow colored chocobo. Yes, it's a large flightless bird - ergo. Chocobo.)

So here's some tests of the camera at 1600 ISO. Generally, on my D200 maximum image quality with minimum objectionable noise, is iso 250. From 320 to 800, so long as I can expose the image properly, the annoying noise is thankfully in the shadows. 800-1600 is iffy, but if I need to take the shot I take it. Fur resolves very badly then. Depending on the critter, even iso 250 can't resolve it properly. Anyways....



Above is the shot in question, a lovely shot of a tripod of sorts I guess. 70-200VR was the lens of choice - this is the lens I pull out when shooting in lowish light conditions. And it was indoors, iso 1600, 2.8... 1/60 kind of situation...



Let's crop on the worst areas where noise occurs... shadows... this is straight from bibble pro 4.10 with no noise reduction. I think this looks like iso 400 on my d200....



After NR - this is the authorized noise ninja built into bibble - set to remove mainly Chroma noise, leaving the luma noise generally alone. I think this really rocks. Notice that the light areas look AMAZING. And in post I usually try to push the darks, and hence the noise, down, so... wow....

What's more interesting is the tone of the image. At 800 ISO, the tones of the image with a D200 start to get a little crunchy, this D300 seems to be very smooth. CMOS technology?



Another test shot, this one was pretty much ensured that I would get a d300....



The clarity of the highlight areas in a D300 is simply. Wow.



After NR, not only does noise ninja kill the chroma noise (film grain here we come!) - it also applies usm, so the image does indeed get a tad sharper.

I'm hoping I can find a nice used d300 - ebay here I come!

GW