Nikon D300 DX 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera
The Nikon D300 is without a doubt leaps and bounds ahead of the Nikon D200 and their competitors. The high ISO is great, and auto white balance more accurate. It is along with the Nikon D3, the best semi-pro camera Nikon has produced.
The pop up flash has commander mode which will free up one of my SB 800 units so I can add it to my army of SB 800 flashes that accompany me to all my shoots. And it will be nice to not have to constantly carry a flash on my camera all the time.
Resolution: The Nikon D300 has a 12 megapixel sensor (32,823 pixels / mm) which means it has a higher resolution than the Canon 1Ds Mark III which has 21 mp at 24,336 pp mm by almost 10,000 pixels / millimeter. It's because of the size of the sensor.
The Canon however has a larger print resolution because it has more pixels, but because the Nikon D300 has a higher sensor resolution it makes inherently sharper images (especially since you can shoot 14 bit now), so you can make larger enlargements with the Nikon than the Canon's enlargements.
This camera is an amazing buy and cheaper than the Nikon D3. The Nikon D2x is still more expensive than the D3. The Nikon D300 is a nice step up from the D2x although I'll miss the high speed crop!
Features: Improved Picture Control for colors - the settings now are sharpening, contrast, brightness, saturation and hue. You can also download from the internet D2XMODE picture controls (there are 3 modes) and load it in to emulate these modes from the D2X bodies.
AF Fine Tuning - this is a great feature that puts in the user's hands the power to calibrate a lens to the camera body. In the past, if you have a great prime lens (e.g. 85mm f/1.4) and want to calibrate it to work optimally to the camera body, you would need to send it to teh Nikon Service Center to do that. With AF Fine Tuning, you can now do it yourself. Because there will be a slight degree of inaccurarcy in AF systems, i.e. front or backward focusing, you can now fine tune that lens (with +/- 20) to the camera body so that it works optimally. It recognizes Nikon lenses without a problem but 3rd party lenses would have to catch up. It can store up to 12 lenses' fine tuning information, so that when you plug back that lens, it would know the fine tune data to use.
In camera picture editing made easier - Once you take a picture, when you press the "ok" button, a list of in camera picture editing tools come up (where you can trim the pic, change to monochrone, use filter effects of skylight or warm filter, or edit the color balance). The color balance feature here is great because you can shift the color balance of the picture to the desire effect you like.
Monochrome Picture Control - The monochrone picture control now comes with filter effects or yellow, orange, red, and green... so gone are the days of carrying these filters when taking black and white shots. You can also adjust the toning from black and white, sepia, cyanotype, and also a range of red, yellow, green, blue green, blue, purple blue, and red purple.
Help button - at anytime when you need some help as to what that feature is about, you only need to press the "?" button and it brings up a page explaing that feature. This is like the D40/x and the menu layout also looks like that of the D40/x.
White balance fine tuning - The Canon 5D had long since had this feature in the white balance tuning where you can shift the white balance in a grid, and finally, this is now incorporated in this camera. Even the other white balance fine tuning is much improved, e.g. for flourascent, it hast a list of different florescent lights to choose from for fine tuning. For the present white balance, you can save up to 4 presets.
Now professional photographers can capture amazing images with this 6 fps camera.
