Reviews for Nikon D300 12.3 Megapixel Digital SLR Camera Body Only

...this camera actually opens a couple of cans of worms. One for every feature added, I can think of two more, or some variation on the way it was implemented that would be better. So I wonder whether the D500, say, would be the camera that I really want, and this one would always leave me hanging.

Second is with each additional feature you now have the potential for several more bugs and "misconfigurations".

it's like how with every new Internet site and every new cable channel...indeed, with every new information source, you now have the potential to waste even more time :) or make more bad decisions, in general.

so we have to ask, is this the best of DSLR 1.0 or the start of DSLR 2.0?

but the more of the shooting decisions that are offloaded into the camera, the more ways there are to offload and manage those decisions. I highly doubt that this camera will be what you want 2 years from now, no more than you would want to continue to run Windows ME once XP became available.

...last but not least, I hope that you will notice the lack of superlatives in my review. It bothers me to see people write reviews like "the viewfinder is huge" or "the image quality is superb", that means nothing to me.

Such reviews are amazingly irritating at best.

It REALLY annoys me to see them about the D300 which does NOT have perfect metering, for a start.

It's not a bad camera. It's not "all that". It might not have the issues of a CCD camera but don't forget Canon has been making and selling CMOS dslrs for years. If you're coming from a Nikon background it might be impressive for different reasons than it impresses me.

What impressed me about it are a) the 51p AF system b) the availablility of the 18-200 VRII for it c) a whole lot of options in the camera configuration. I wonder how well that AF microadjustment works? I am looking forward to trying that out. Still again the more features that it has, the more that I would want to change in how it works.


But anyway it seems that there are always people willing to write stupid superlative-laden reviews about cameras and then the better the camera, the more such reviews and then things just get over the top with a good camera.

It's a good camera. It's not perfect.

now this message is for a700 owners in general who are still wondering how much of a debacle this issue is, of "raw NR". After doing a good day of testing both an a700 with the sal18-250 and the d300 with the 18-200 VRII I can tell you that there is a slight, but noticeable, advantage in the d300 camp, in terms of fine-detail. Yes there is NR in the a700 raw files but there is not a huge difference in fine-detail. But it is "perceptible" in terms of the full image. The D300 images simply look sharper and clearer with more detail. The a700 is not bad but the D300 is better. Plus, at least using Bibble Lite 4.9.9 as the raw converter and the colorimetric tone curve, the output for the D300 looks a LOT better than the output for the a700. The colors are natural right out of the raw converter, the images crisp and sharp. The D300 jpegs have slightly more texture and are slightly but distinctly sharper than the A700 jpegs, as well, but the D300 jpegs look a little washed out with much less contrast and saturation, and the a700 has more customstyle presets for this but in the end what it does is basically apply a green tint to the image while the D300 jpegs are actually overexposed. More or less tint is applied depending on what customstyle you select. But the A700 Bibble output is hardly all that different in either color or texture from the camera jpegs (it predictably looks worse, with less contrast and saturation), while the D300 Bibble output just looks great. You don't even have to do anything to it, really. Short of tweaking the in-camera settings, I would rank it D300 jpeg;a700 jpeg (but very close), then a700 raw:D300 raw with a big edge to the D300. The take-away is that one is tuned for the casual jpeg shooter who wants extended ISO range with lower noise, and the other is tuned for raw shooters, people who are willing to put serious time and effort into their images and whose first instinct is to make raw files and then head to their computer to do PP. If you are going to shoot mostly jpeg, especially if you don't plan to play with the images very much, the a700 should be just fine. Without a doubt people who are into PP want the D300. Assuming that there are no major problems in Bibble with converting A700 raw files vs D300 raw files, but even so, the camera jpegs are very linear and definitely "off to the right" in terms of exposure.

I still say that on ease of use the a700 wins but clearly in terms of features the D300 has it beat. In the end, the A700 is "good enough", like a good Panasonic P&S (certainly the jpegs look like Panasonic P&S output), but for those who want "natural-looking results", the D300 would be the way to go, no question. I would not say this if the D300 output from Bibble looked slightly better than the A700 output. It looks a LOT better. But you will have to shoot raw to see the real difference. If you look at nothing but camera jpegs you will wonder what all the fuss is about, they really do look practically the same when shooting only jpeg.

216 Comments about: "Response to Alpha DSLR Comments"

1. Dec. 31, 2007 4:59pm | Posted by: touristguy87 The moderator is reviewing your comment.

…I am not going to say that you should not do NR in the raw stream, before the raw files are
formed, not at all. I won’t say that, pedantically.

But it has to be *good* NR. It has to be the kind of NR that gives you good, clean, sharp images.
The in-camera NR is not sufficient to do this in and of itself, therefore there simply has to be
consideration taken for doing it with standard 3rd-party tools.

What you guys are doing gets rid of about 40% of the noise. That’s fine for a start. If you have no
intention of doing further NR on the image, you could live with that. But people are not buying
these cameras to produce noisy shots, as you very well know. They just can’t really be “fixed”, with
any tool that *I* know of, without eliminating *all* of the fine detail with massive NR and exposure
and contrast.

The Sony NR routines and raw-processing software will definitely give you oil paintings at high ISO.
The D300 shows that you need not accept that compromise.
2. Dec. 31, 2007 4:52pm | Posted by: touristguy87 The moderator is reviewing your comment.

Sony guys, I’d say that this is a non-issue. Whatever it is that you are doing to the noise at high
ISOs, it’s wrong if you want to do any further NR on the images. I like the A700, I think that it’s
a lot easier to handle than the D300 and I’ve got mine set up just the way that I want it, in spite
of the fact that the D300 has a lot more customizations, it doesn’t have some important ones that I
want it to have. And the front wheel is about as useful as the little front wheels on a rail
dragracer. Even so they’ve got you beat hands-down on this NR issue. Whatever it is that you are
doing increases the grain size of the luminance noise so much that Neat Image, for example, can’t
really work well with it…if you imagine that it is reducing the luminance noise by reducing the
contrast between the noisy pixel and the surrounding pixels, then with the D300, because the
luminance noise grain is so small, it has no problem doing this. NR just blends the noise into the
image. With the A700 the “noise grain” is so much larger (due to whatever it is that you guys are
doing) that when NI runs on it it creates these sizable blotches where the “noise” was. And it is
real easy to see and looks pretty bad unless you use a lot less NR than with the D300 raw files. The
way to deal with that is to reduce the exposure (or increase contrast) as I’ve said before and push
as much of the noise into the black (or at least the deep shadows) as possible, then run NI on it.
But you can imagine what that does to the exposure of the shadows, and while in the end you can get
the “noise numbers” to be about the same, the D300 shot looks a lot better.

These shots just look really good, about as close to a low-ISO shot as you can get while still
shooting at high ISOs.

In the end the D300 raw files not only have more fine-detail to start with, but it is easier to
clean the shots in PP and that is before you even start talking about color tints. It is a
no-contest win for Nikon. The a700 is fine for jpeg shooters and there is even some potential in the
raw files at low to moderate ISOs. At the highest ISOs you will want the D300 for good, clean
images with moderate exposure and contrast. Simply because their image-processing engine is more
refined, and, just more professional. They do not try to do to the raw files what I have to admit a
whole host of people have pointed out, should not be done to raw files. And the results are clear to
see if you can work with raw files from both cameras.

Now, if you want to do that, just go here:

http://www.rawsamples.ch/index_en.php

and get some raw files and play with them.

I used Bibble 4.9.9b and Neat Image 5.8.

ok before I say or show anything else let me just say that I kept the D300 and Nikon 18-200 VRII and ebayed my A700 and the SAL18-250. And it was long hard choice to do that. Three things carried the day on this. One, the lens is great and I can buy it at any time. Two, Sony might actually fix this problem and then I could buy another one. Three, I will always be able to get my money back out of the Nikon gear. Since then a couple of things have come up which have tilted it even more in the D300s favor and one thing has come up which has tilted it a little back into the A700s favor, but for now I'm pretty-much set with a good camera and lens that takes good photos and has good color and noise properties and a good zoom range and focuses well, that I can shoot handheld around the clock, given any sort of decent light, and THAT is where I wanted to be this time 6 months ago. Everything else is starting from this point. And then I bought a Canon A650 just to round things out.

for some reason this system is saying that my Gimp photos "contain viruses" ?

so I'll have to post the Flickr link to them.

enjoy :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12219276@N08/2188071440/in/set-72157603692081466/

so since I'm pretty happy with the Nikon D300 and 18-200 VRII lens, I'll just post my shots (my good shots from all my cameras, camera testing, etc) to Flickr...if you want to see more examples from this camera, just search for touristguy87 on Flickr. Good luck :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12219276@N08/show/

Dear Sonotla, I just want to say to you, on your way off the IR forum after you are banned for spamming and trolling, that I doubt that I would be shooting any ISO6400 shots of anything that I really want to take shots of. For landscape shots, especially night landscapes, there would be way too much noise in the shot. It seems as though I can get the shots that I want at ISO1600-3200max. I was in Moscow this past weekend and happily shooting ISO800-1600 at night, I threw in some ISO3200 shots just to stop traffic. But in general ISO1600 was fine, noise-free for all intents and purposes, and plenty fast enough. ISO2500 in a pinch, and ISO3200 at most. I could have just left it on ISO2500, reallly. The main thing is that the faster the ISO, the less sharpening can be applied, but in the end you want the noise to *just* be visible at full-image, and the noise visibility depends just as much on ISO as the amount of sharpening that is applied in PP or the amount of NR applied. But I am trying to avoid applying any NR, and just shoot fast enough to get the shot, then I can sharpen to taste, for the most part. And I think the D300 had no problem with this, in Moscow at night, shooting on the Red Square, around the Kremlin. The main issue is how good is the focus? And with the a700 it would have been, how much does it respond to the floodlights, with comedy colors? Now, since I did have some trouble with the focus there, shooting at night, and it was fairly well-lit, too, but also snowing or snow was blowing around, one of the two, I know that I made a better choice with the D300 over the a700. Because it *clearly* focused better in low light than the a700 did. Whether you think that the colors are 'flat" or not? That's up to you. But I can boost saturation, hue, tint, whatever, to suit. You can't fix the focus if it's bad. Not to mention that I can micro-tune the AF on the D300.

Now, with regard to "comedy colors"...

I think that you've seen this shot before, because you spammed the PG thread in which it appears:

http://ai.pricegrabber.com/uploaded_images/020000-020999/020484-75x60.jpg

http://reviews.pricegrabber.com/digital/m/48081032/discussions/thread/421897/#15795

...in which I mention this very problem. And show two examples. I can put more there, if you really want to see them. I'd like to, especially while I'm looking right at them, but that would take time, and be redundant. And besides, I sold the camera 2 weeks ago. I'd like to post some of the D300 shots that I took in Moscow this weekend, instead. Which was the whole point of buying a DSLR in the first place. The only problem is that I found myself taking hundreds of shots of the same stuff just to make sure that I got a few good ones...over two nights...giving myself two chances to get the exposure and focus right, and to frame the shot in a way that I would like...the 2nd time was much easier because I had a better idea of what I wanted. It was a big advantage over shooting off a tripod with my A610 which is the point that I wanted to make, but still, it did take a lot more time and effort than I expected to get a good shot, and geez does this 18-200VRII lens have a lot of distortion at wide-angle. Then there is the question of whether a DSLR at medium ISO can really match the IQ of a Canon A610 shot off a tripod, at low ISO? The jury is still out on that one. I do know that it was a lot easier to move around and take shots. I still think that you cannot depend on one shot, to be a good one, especially when shooting at night, you have to refocus and shoot a few times. But in the main it did what I wanted it to do, with no color or focus foolishness. I will let the shots do the talking.

...last but not least I just want to say that I don't see any advantage in doing NR in the raw data. At all. If you want a completely noise-free background, just shoot at low ISO or use a NR program, reduce exposure, increase contrast, whatever. There are many ways to handle noise. There's no need to do NR in-camera, especially not in the raw data.

Now, if that sensor has something to reduce A/D noise, you have to ask, just how much A/D noise is there?

But I do like the absence of "streak" pattern noise like what I see in the Canons at high ISO. I think that the D300 clearly wins over the 30D and 40D, too, for that reason, though I wouldn't mind having sraw to play with.

ps there is a switch on the back to select the wide-angle 51p af, or a "floating" single-point AF, or a fixed point controllable with the control wheel.

The floating thing is pretty neat. The AF point bounces around until it finds something to focus on.

I guess that looking at features vs IQ, this camera is pretty neat...like all DSLRs it is huge, for taking photos, but it is clearly fast enough to take photos under a wide variety of light conditions. It is not the most conveniently laid out but I got used to it fairly quickly. I shot mine fairly heavily for 3 days in Moscow and didn't take the battery under 75% charge. On that note alone it's a winner. 9 times out of 10, a camera will use up the battery in a day, 500 shots max, between the display and the AF even with a ring zoom. So I'm getting used to it, and having a good time shooting it, and except for the lens having a fair amount of distortion, it's a lot of fun to shoot and the photos look great. I could definitely see some great output from it with a better lens than the 18-200VRII.

...well, ok I see a bunch of things, but if this is a 1.5x crop camera then what do you expect from a full-frame?

see, not only is it easier to post and edit shots on Flickr than here, but they are bigger and show up immediately, vs the long delay and small image size that you get here. So I will continue to post updates there.

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=2216628031&size=l

What I am seeing now is that I want to keep the camera below ISO4000 at most for the kind of shots that I like to take, that I bought a DSLR for, because that keeps the noise under control and then I don't have to worry about NR and losing sharpness and fine-detail as a result. ISo1600 is clean for all intents and purposes, and I am now experimenting with ISO vs sharpening vs noise vs stability and exposure to find an optimum range with this camera. Definitely, a faster lens than the Nikon 18-200 VRII would help.

more good news for Nikon fans, DxO now has lens-correction modules for V5, for the Nikon D300 and 18-200VRII which make it almost but not quite as sharp as the SAL18-250 out of the bag...

Now I need to reprocess most of my Flickr images and post some updates on my PG review of the D300 :)

more fun, more often :)

This means that I no longer *have* to buy the 70-300 VR, now I can buy it just for fun :) (and an excellent lens it is, and selling at $400 too)

After a month I can just say this: this camera just kicks butt and takes names. I can't say that the images are the most impressive that I've ever seen, especially behind this dull Nikon18-200 lens, and I can't say that the IS on it is the best that I've ever seen (it seems to work down around 1-15s best, and occasionally shots at 1-3s come out), but the camera is so easy to use, easy to get a good focus with in awful shooting conditions...just a great piece of work. This is one of the few reviews that I've put up where I don't have a lot of images. That's because most of the images that I've taken with this camera -both night and day- are just fine. Oh sure they have a few minor flaws here and there, and, sure, I can easily find the limits of this camera, but overall, the images look great. The AutoWB is good (even the presets are good) and the focus is good and the batteries last forever, the LCD is very good...if the lens were a little sharper I would be ecstatic. In fact given all this I bought another Sony a700 and SAL18-250 just to keep the shot count down on my $1800 D300, I was having such a blast shooting the D300 that I ran off 5,000 shots in the first month of ownership. I was thinking about buying the supposedly very sharp 70-200 F4 VR for it, but I don't want to risk damaging the camera in changing the lens. I can deal with the 18-200VRII. I don't want anything to happen to this camera. It is just phenomenal. Maybe not the best at any one thing but certainly the best overall, that I've ever shot. My post-processing with it now is raw (if not raw + jpeg normal) to Bibble 4.9.9b with tone-curve set to camera and contrast to 25 maybe but no other corrections, then to DxO pro 5 for lens-correction and a little extra sharpening. Easy as pie. The shots sharpen up beautifully. If you want to see bad shots go look at my other reviews. If you want to see good shots, just buy this camera.

...er, the supposedy very sharp 70-300 F4 VR. For a mere $500. But I couldn't see swapping it with the 18-200 just for an extra 50% of focal length, giving up the wide-angle and knowing I can sharpen the images in DxO if necessary. *But* if the 70-300 fits your interests better, then that's just another reason to buy this camera. And if I were going to the beach for a week, I would probably take one with me.

"Contentment". That's one word to describe how I feel about it. It's not perfect. Just "very good". Good enough to make me happy with it. No need to revisit the images, and I look forward to more shots from it. I look forward to the *experience* of shooting it, of seeing and keeping the good ones and enjoying them, of seeing and discarding the bad ones. I know the bad ones are due to my either pushing the camera and lens too hard, or my not getting the shot set up right. They are not due to some fundamental problem with the camera like the WB and tint being hopelessly off or too much NR or even so much of both chrominance and luminance NR in the raw files that there is blotchy chroma noise throughout the whole image. Shooting the d300 is like driving a very nice car, a nice but only moderately-fast car, where you enjoy the drive but you don't want to go out and just *drive* it just for the sake of driving it, that would be wasteful and abusive, and contrary to the purpose of having a car, which is to go somewhere, especially to be ready to go somewhere when you need to go there. I take the d300 out shooting to both get out and enjoy the world and to take photos of where I go and what I see, so that I can enjoy the visions again when I get home or even when I am at work. I don't shoot this camera so that I can nitpick the shots. When I critique the shots from this camera, I am mostly critiquing my own skills, or the absence of enough daylight to take the shot, or even the lack of sharpness of my Nikon 18-200 VRII lens at long focal lengths, at least until I run DxO on the images. And that is all that I can really ask for, from a camera. Be good enough to keep up with me. This camera is that in spades. From 18mm to 180mm at F8 the Nikon 18-200 VRII is just fine. It's that last "erg" of performance and shooting it around F5.6 in daylight that is going to make it crash. DxO can fix most of this but running DxO means another layer of PP (and not an easy one). Most of the time, at most focal lengths, under almost all lighting conditions, the lens and camera are just fine, even without DxO. To show this I would have to put up samples of about 75% of my shots. The other 25%, taken outdoors at night, shot at ISO4000 and up at speeds under 1-15s? I'm just not worried about them. It is too dark to see anything except the lights themselves, and too much noise is introduced into the shot at such ISOs in any case. That's just too much to ask of this camera, that's full-frame/tripod territory. ISO3200 and below, 1-15s and faster, F6.3-F8, 18mm-200mm, this lens and camera simply kills. Virtually fault-free. Allowing me to focus on the shot and the exposure and not worry about the camera is going to do or what the shot will look like. The a700 with the SAL18-250 may have a longer reach and may allow me to shoot a little longer and slower and still get good shots with less blur and less post-processing required. But the price that you pay for that is in the color tint and white-balance and background noise, and the lack of focus flexibility and range. The two cameras cannot really be equated, the a700-SAL18250 is simply better at some things and worse at others, better in some ways and worse in others. With the SAL18-250, the a700s' strength is in the lens. With the Nikon 18-200, the D300s strength is in the camera.

...it is so good that I am afraid that I will wear out the shutter inside of 6 months. I bought two other cameras around the same time, a replacement Canon a610 and a Canon a650, just to get an A-series with IS. they're both decent cameras. The D300 is so much better that I can't see shooting either of them if I have the D300, and I can't see not carrying the D300 if I can carry it and might see a shot that I want. And this is with the other two A-series cameras fitting in the same camera bag. I figure with the a700 and SAL18-250 I can at least shoot it during the day and get shots that are as good as with the d300 and Nikon 18-200, even better at long range because of the better lens, and if in spite of the color-f-ed upness and large noise grain of the a700 I get some good shots from it at night or indoors, then fine. If not, such is life. But at least I won't wear out *two* DSLRs in 6 months! And I'm damm sure not buying another d300 and say a 70-300 F4 VR just to keep that from happening. But man, this camera is so, so much fun to carry and shoot. Even as big and heavy as it is, it is highly rewarding. I can deal with owning a second $1800 DSLR and lens, just to keep the heat off my primary one. And knowing that I don't have to accept the faults of either one to get its advantages, really makes it easy to relax about buying either one. Just buy them both. One you will like better than the other, but you will be glad to have them both. Having two separate DSLRs and lenses is always better than having just one, as long as you can get good shots out of both cameras and lenses. And as long as you can afford them. But if I had to choose just one the D300 would win hands down. It is just a better all-around camera than the a700. Not so good that I would never want to shoot the a700 and SAL18-250 over the Nikon D300 and 18-200 VRII, no, during the day at long range, the Sony hw is clearly better, and at night it is stable at slightly slower speeds allowing for better exposures at a given ISO, right at the limit of shooting. In between those two extremes, and in terms of low-light focusing, fine-detail, noise-grain, color naturalness, overall handling and battery life, the Nikon D300 simply kicks Sony butt. I'm going to look at the slow-shooting issue more closely when I get the a700 set up because having a half-EV or half-stop advantage at a given ISO makes a big difference when shooting handheld at night, right at the limits of the camera. It's the difference between an underexposed shot and a shot with good exposure. These are legitimate concerns. I just find that the D300 is better for 80% of the shots that I take, and is not that bad on the ones where it "loses". It is never really "bad". Just sometimes the a700-sal18250 shots are slightly sharper and brighter. Just as often, though, they are less sharp and the colors are hosed, and the shot is a disaster compared to the D300 output. You do not see those disasters with the D300, that is why I sold the a700 and kept the D300 the first time that I tried this...before shooting the D300 alone for a month and basically falling in love with it. The SSS is probably a little more effective than VRII even, the SAL18-250 is undoubtedly sharper than the Nikon 18-200 VRII, but the D300 is unquestionably a better camera than the Sony A700. No doubt about it. If you have both cameras in your hands you cannot avoid this conclusion. Unfortunately for Nikon you have to put a lens on the camera and, given that, the A700 is able to put some serious heat on the D300 at low ISOs and at extreme shutter speeds. Take the lens out of the equation by shooting at short to moderate focal lengths and shutter speeds at or above 1-15s, that is to say, stay within the Nikon 18-200s' comfort-zone, and the D300 wins hands-down.

.....tonight I experimented with pushing the exposure time down below 1-10s shooting handheld, and getting a good look at the noise between ISO2000 and ISO3200, and the low-light focus in 51point AF mode, and the AutoWB and incandescent manual WB setting. The results were wonderful. I could not ask for the WB to be better, from a preset. And it has 6 user-configurable offsets for each WB preset! Focus was consistently good on all the shots that I took tonight, I consistently got expsoures handheld at 1-8s and, really, I just could not ask for a better camera. There could be a smidgen less noise, but I am talking about raw files here. The lens could be sharper, but again, I am talking about a $700 18-200 superzoom. This camera and lens are almost exactly what I want. And having said that, tomorrow I will post some shots and try not to repeat myself too much :)

Here are some quick ones...wasn't I going to post shots to Flickr from now on? I guess so. But then I have to put them on a map, add a bunch of text, sort through the ones I already have there, etc etc etc. So I have to start by downsampling any and all shots to 1MP Q90 to save there. So here are 5 I did quickly just looking through a list of raw shots that I converted with Bibble 4.9.9b and then ran through DxO for the lens correction. Just five, the rest-slash-"from now on" I will upload to Flickr, but I did say that I would post some here. This review obviously needs a few because so far I am at 40% :)
(these are all shot with the Nikon 18-200 VRII and run through DXO for lens-correction and sharpened with unsharp mask 150-0.4-4)

More of the same PP chain...now, in finality, what I will add is that this lens truly holds the camera back...even contributing what it does, to the equation...if you like to swap lenses then fine, if you don't, then try the 18-200. You'll find that it is a little short and dull, at 200mm, even at F8, but it focuses well. I would say that in terms of noise that I can shoot raw up to ISO3200 without any real concern for noise, maybe ISO4000 depending on the background lighting (more light=less visible noise). It really does do what I bought it to do. Now, I can get greedy and "want" more. But this is enough, really. I would consider buying a 100-400 for it, just for fun, for shooting outdoors, out of the city, at the beach and so forth, where I can really get into the longer focal ranges and I don't need the wide-angle. I see no point in swapping-off this lens for a 70-300. Instead of shooting ISO6400 I would suggest that you get an F2.8 lens. But, really, so far I see no need to shoot ISO6400, even at night under streetlights. With the 18-200VRII I can shoot ISO2000-3200 and get good steady well-exposed shots at night at any focal range. Just watch my Flickr page (search for my nick there).

...the slideshow here is really worth the effort of clicking on it. Here's a link to my Flickr page.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12219276@N08/

this lens...

http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/125/cat/13

I find that zoom is much more valuable than speed, sure F2.8 is nice, but the DOF is infinitesimal and really F4-F5.6 is ok. But sure if you want to spend $400 more for a 70-200 F2.8 be my guest. But it is just so nice to be talking about a SECOND LENS and not the camera and the FIRST lens. Seems like for 6 months now I've been trying to solve that problem and have finally done it. Ok this is 80-400 F4.-F5.6 with VR but with a teleconverter it turns into a 560 at the very least. You're talking about almost 3x the gain of the 18-200 for a lens that costs less than the Canon 70-200 F2.8. Or ok get the 70-300 and a 1.4x tele. But it is so nice to have these *options* and not be screwed by the main lens!!!!

...trust me, 640x480 doesn't do these shots justice. The colors look muted, sure, because I have turned the contrast down in-camera, and you here can't see the level of fine-detail...enough said, see my Flickr page.

...most digital cameras would have simply "hurled" on these shots...there's nothing to focus on, really...nothing bright...the d300 ate these shots up. Not like every single shot will be in perfect focus, but far more than most DSLRs under most conditions. Oh by the way, these are unsharpened raw output from Bibble.

I guess that I can put shots here if they show a feature of the camera but aren't really the type of shots that I'd want to put on my Flickr page. But go there for more shots from this camera. You can just search for d300 shots on flickr, by the way, using the camera-finder.

I picked up a 70-300VR today thinking that it would be sharper than the 18-200 at least beyond 100mm...doesn't look that way. But it's decently sharp in the center. Here it is at ISO2500 handheld, F5.6. http://www.flickr.com/photos/12219276@N08/2276747486/sizes/o/

....still if you plan to do any lowlight shooting of any scenes where you need the camera to get the WB right automatically, where you need good color resolution and accuracy and you need good focus-accuracy in low light combined with good high-ISO fine-detail and reasonable, manageable noise, this camera will definitely do it for you. Just shoot it with the NR off, and set up the camera to produce, at most, moderate luminance noise, then bump-up the contrast if necessary in PP to hide most if not all of it. If a light dusting of luminance noise remains, then hit that with NR. You'll be amazed at what you can get out of this camera shooting handheld in low light.

...the key is to not be so afraid of luminance noise that you underexpose the shot, but by the same token, to not let it overwhelm your shot. Also don't try to use NR to remove anything but the very lightest dusting of luminance noise. Boost the contrast first.

...DxO5 was crashing because as I kept running it I kept adding files to the directory with all my other files and it became less and less stable because the directory list took up more and more memory. What a dumb program. Anyway today I picked up the Tamron 18-250 for DX mount which seems to have solved the lens blur problem. it is basically the same lens as the Sony sal18-250, just with Tamron badging. This one has the onboard focus motor and works great, though you do give up the VR. That just means that it has to be shot at at least 1-125 at full zoom. Now I have it, the Nikon 18-200Vr and the Nikon 70-300VR in my bag, and it all fits in well and the bag is not too big. So now I'll just have ot shoot this "setup" for a while and see which lens gets used when. I suspect that I will use the Tamron mostly during the day and in decent indoor lighting and use the VR lenses after dusk. The 70-300 is too good to let go of, it lets me shoot 1-3s handheld at 300mm. It's not the sharpest lens but the VR is just excellent.

The Tamron 18-250 is definitely nice and sharp across the frame, with good contrast. It does need to be shot at at least 1/FL handheld maybe you can get down to 3/4ths FL but I wouldn't push it too far. It is easy to see when little, bright lights are not quite stable. Even if most of the shot looks stable, shaky lights will give it away. You might fix that with sharpening...might not. But it can easily be shot until the lights come out. I think that between this and the Nikon 18-200 VRII, the 70-300VRII is redundant but still would have use say at the beach or something where your shots are starting at 70mm. Certainly in low light, it gives you the best of both worlds. Right about at the point where you'd want the 80-400 on a tripod, say, and at that point you could just pick up the Tokina 80-400 for DX mount and tripod-mount it. There's no sense in trying to carry or hand-shoot the Nikon 80-400, it's over twice as expensive as the Tokina, supposedly not any better in terms of IQ and there's not much to be gained with the VR. I don't know for sure, I've never shot it, but what I'm finding out is that this hardware either surprises or is a let-down. It very rarely does no more and no less what is expected of it. But you have to ask yourself, why do you need a 400mm lens anyway? And the only place that I could see wanting one is in wide-open spaces trying to see things very far away. Either little things or big things quite far out. It's an interesting idea, but why test this theory at $1200? $1500 retail? Let's put it this way: I can mount any of these 3 lenses on my d300 and put them all in a reasonably-sized bag and carry them. The Tokina is the same size as the 70-300 but doesn't have VR. Hm. Maybe I'll have to try one just for fun. It will need 1-400 speed, at least, to shoot it handheld, but during the day that's not a problem...and it's the same price and even a little shorter than the 70-300VRII...but what a difference...you can shoot the 70-300VRII at 300mm at 1/20s handheld.

...man, with a 12MP camera, there is a serious difference between viewing the images full-screen and looking at them at 100%. I went through and looked at all the shots that I took with the Tamron 18-250 at 100%, and the ones that were shaky leaped out...the ones that were out of focus, leaped out...I deleted those, the ones that looked slightly shaky or out of focus at 100%, I kept, and I saw a lot of good ones...clearly 1/FL or 1/2FL is no hard & fast rule. The biggest thing is to shoot F8. I kept a few F6.3 shots and even fewer F5.6 shots. For example, at 155mm I took shots at F8 at 1/60s, 1/90s and 1/250s, varying the ISO. The slower shots looked ok, only in comparing them to the fastest shot could I see any camera-shake. It is "there" if you look at 100%, and "there" if you compare them to the faster shots at full-screen. But I've deleted just as many shots at, say, 1/180s that I have deleted at 1/45s, at long focal-lengths. The shot has to have great focus *and* be shake-free to look good at 100%. Then there are about 3 degrees of each, "none", "some" and "a lot". It has to be really f-ed up to look bad when viewed at full-screen but if you weed out the ones with severe defects when viewed at 100%, the remaining ones look really good at full-screen. But if you take out the ones that are slightly "off" just not perfect when viewed at 100%, you'll throw away a lot of shots that look good when viewed at full-screen (and this is before I've run DxO on them, to reduce lens blur). And without at doubt shooting at F8 looks sharper than at lower F#s. But with this Tamron 18-250 I would have no problem with what I'm seeing even at F5.6, at full-screen. It's much sharper across the frame than the Nikon 18-200VR and the Sigma 18-200? Let's not even talk about it. I won't say that this lens is perfect but it takes much less of a hit from not having VR than you'd expect. You just aren't going to get those really slow, long handheld shots that yould get from a VR lens.

hm

a couple of things after playing with the shots from this and a 5D...one, the 51 p AF system is really more of a problem than a solution because lenses are generally not sharp away from the center when used wide-open, and that's when a lens focuses, when it is wide-open. You should stick to using the center part of the lens, in terms of the AF points. At least if you want to get a really-sharp focus. And the 51 p AF system on the D300 is without a doubt, exceptionally slow. P&S slow.

Second, while the d300 is fairly noisy (it's a 12MP subframe after all) the noise is almost all straightforward luminance and chroma noise. You don't see a lot of crud showing up in the background like you do with the 5D, 30d and 40d when shot at high ISO in continuous drive. It is very easy to push the d300 shots and get great improvements in exposure, the only problem is that the noise does tend to take the edge off the shot.