Lowest Price Nikon D300 DX 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
by Smith
| Posted in
Best Nikon D300,
Buy Nikon D300,
Cheap Nikon D300,
Discount Nikon D300,
Looking for Nikon D300,
Nikon D300 DX 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)
If you buy this camera, be prepared to fork out a lot of money (after buying the body). You're going to go broke.
This camera will inspire you like you've never dreamed of. You'll throw caution to the wind and buy top of the line lenses and filters. My polarizing filter alone was $185. I only put the best filters on this camera.
I love this DSLR so much that I bought more lenses, a SB800 and a SB600 flash unit. Then I bought a wireless remote (absolutely fantastic). Don't forget to buy a few SanDisk Extreme IV 8GB memory cards with the Extreme IV reader; it's worth it! After I learn this camera, I might buy the battery pack.
I bought a D80 within the past year but so many of my pictures were blurry or didn't come out right and when I increased the ISO speed I got way too much noise. Now when the light is low or I need a faster speed I don't hesitate to crank up the ISO to 1600 or even faster. (btw: CaptureNX does a much better job of reducing noise than Photoshop CS2.) The year before I bought a Canon XTi with a $1200 lens but the viewfinder was so dark that I couldn't manually focus so I bought the D90.
Nearly every photograph out of the D300 are absolutely perfect. Many of the photos require zero photoshopping.
I've been doing photography for over 30 years (non-professionally but I went to art school full time and majored in photography for 3 years). I started off with 4x5, 5x7 cameras and a Nikon FTN. Aside from the 5x7 camera, this is the best camera I had in my whole life.
This camera is heavier than the D80 and I couldn't imagine hauling around a D3. The rubber grips are very comfortable and I thought the D80 was fairly decent.
On the downside, Nikon manuals really suck and the menus are a beast to learn. For auto-ISO, what were they thinking by setting the max shutter speed to 1/250th of a second? Why not go for the full range? With a telephoto and fast action I want at least 1/2000th of a second.
[Edit: The newest firmware removed the 1/250th second restriction. You can now set any shutter speed.]
CaptureNX (included for free) but it has a number of issues that I won't go into detail here but it does have some great features. You will need an ultra-fast computer with a lot of memory. It's a major CPU and memory hog. I bumped up my RAM to 4GB and even with a new fast Intel dual-core, the CPU is typically pegged out.
I found one store that had the camera in stock and on my birthday I went out and bought it full price. I don't regret it.
A word of caution: If you're going on a vacation or going shoot something important, buy the camera at least a month or earlier and learn the options to maximize the desired results. There are tons of tweaking you can do. Or just use 'P' mode and treat it like a point-and-shoot.
I'm not familiar with the other high-end ($1700 range) cameras but I gotta tell you, this camera is absolutely spectacular which is why some stores are almost always out of stock and they put you on a waiting list; and this camera has been out for quite a few months.
[Edit: Sigh. Less than 6 months after I bought the D300, they released the D700. I'll wait a year or two before upgrading]Get more detail about Nikon D300 DX 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only).