Nikon D300 Review

OK. I'm going to give the punch line away. I love my new Nikon D300. I love this camera with a passion that rivals that of my feelings for some film cameras in the days of yore like my Leicas, my Nikon FM2, and my large format Deardorf. This is the first digital Single Lens Reflex (dSLR) that I've used that approaches what a dSLR should be, and maybe even the Platonic ideal of a dSLR. This is definitely not the "Chef of the Past" or your father's camera. The D300 gives a pretty good sense of what digital cameras for serious prosumers are likely to be in the future.

Leaving passion and infatuation out of things for a moment--hard to do, since for us photographers our feelings for our gear always involve strong emotions--the improvements in the D300 compared to the previous model (the D200) are mostly incremental rather than revolutionary. The camera still has some serious drawbacks, or at least presents issues that are somewhere on that ever present feature-bug line. For example, informed and well-intentioned photographers will reach differing conclusions about the sensor, which is smaller than a 35mm frame in a ratio of 1.5 to 1 (more on this issue later). And the D300 form factor is a behemoth. If you don't have the committment to schlepp a heavy piece of gear around, this isn't the camera for you (and more power to you).

This is a camera capable of taking images that resolve comparably, in my opinion, at least to medium format film. For example, take a look at this photo of the California coast, shot with the lens wide open:

View this image larger.

[California Coast near San Gregorio, Nikon D300, 18-200mm Zoom lens at 18mm (27mm in 35mm terms), 1/50 of a second at f/3.5 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

It's pretty clear to me that with a 14-bit RAW capture like this one (at ISO 100) the limiting factor is becoming the quality of the optics rather than the sensor, capture, and on-board processing mechanism. Note that the 14-bit capture is new (the D200 captured in 12-bits), and adds considerable information and tonal quality in the photos I've examined closely so far. A downside to this increased file size is that larger file sizes clog memory cards and disk storage. For me, this is a price well worth paying, but I'd suggest ameloriating the issue by using memory cards that are as fast as possible to speed processing of the larger-size image files. (SanDisk Extreme IV cards are a good choice, and what I've standardized on.)

My assumption is that I'm writing this review largely for people who already own Nikon dSLR equipment. You can read my full review of the Nikon D300 on my blog.