Nikon D300 Digital SLR Camera Body

The D300 is fantastic you will struggle to buy a better camera for this price. Build quality is exceptional and every function is your require is at your fingertips. Image quality is great even at high ISO. The icing on the cake FPS (buy the extra battery grip and shoot 8FPS) sounds great.

Oh wow, what can I say. I've had the camera for just 2 days and I'm already blown away.

Acquiring this camera has been a dream of mine for some time. I recently sold my modest collection of Canon gear to get enough to buy this and the 50mm f/1.4 D. I'm so glad I did.

As one of the other reviewers has mentioned, it's a steep learning curve upgrading from a starter DSLR. For me, upgrading from a Canon 400D it was even moreso, however the controls are incredibly intuitive and well placed and after just a few days I'm already feeling at home with this little beauty.

The camera feels like it's built like a tank, but not in a bad way. Very solid indeed. You can feel quality oozing from it. I'm also very pleased with the high ISO performance and still getting used to the base ISO being 200. I had some great glass with my 400D and at 200 there was some noticeable grain on full crops - with the Nikon there is none at all.

Can't recommend this puppy enough.

Also, thanks a lote WE for such speedy delivery!

The D300 replaced the D200 in late 2007. The D200 was (and still is) an iconic and pioneering workhorse and legend of photography. The D300 is essentially the same body but improved.

But first let's start with what the D300 is NOT:

If you are looking for a small and lightweight travel or walkabout camera that is convenient to take everywhere then the D300 is not it. At approx 825g without lens or external flash, the D300 is very nearly DOUBLE the weight of some other models available such as the D40.

Similarly, if you are looking for SLR speed, flexibility and image quality in an easy to use package for casual snapshots then the D300 is probably not for you either. The D40 and D60 will give very similar image quality to the D300 at a fraction of the price. And the D90 will give you most of the functionality too. Especially to those who do not have several years to learn the art and technique of photography or even the several months required to become fully accustomed to the D300's advanced controls and features.

For those looking for the ultimate in resolving power and high resolution, I'm afraid the D300 fails again. I'm not talking about the vast majority of us here, I'm talking about pro landscape photographers and high end studio pros. You guys will probably already have your eye on a D3 or D3X, or medium to large format film cameras. Which are obscenely expensive to buy/run (respectively).

So the D300 is a jack of all trades and has no real place in the market right? No! The D300 is indeed a Jack of all Trades and will take on any task adequately. More so than any other camera.

But where the D300 excels is it's shear usability. With a tough Magnesium Alloy body and professional weather sealing, dedicated external controls for all of the important settings to make sure that you're ready for the shot and blazing fast and accurate 51 point autofocus and metering inherited from the D3 but without it's bulk and weight, the D300 goes wherever you go and just does what you need it to. Whatever you need it to do.

Yes the D300 has amazing colour, high ISO performance, contrast and resolution, but these are secondary. Pro and serious amateur photographers alike, who are intimately familiar with their craft, can plant the D300 against their face and drive away without ever having to leave the viewfinder and KNOW that they got the shot first time and without hassle.

Of course... it doesn't hurt to take advantage of the D300's blisteringly fast 6 frames per second to make double sure!

One of the greatest things about being a D300 user is that you never need to fiddle with menus in the field and that's worth the price tag alone. And the D300 is only 2/3 the weight of the D3 and half as conspicuous.

It's because of this that the D300 is the camera recording the world world-wide and capturing history as it happens. Just like the D200 did.

The D300 at the time was a logical replacement for my aged Nikon D2X,purchased with the optional grip which if you do any vertical shooting or have large hands is a must.
Most of the other reviews have covered the camera as a whole so I will review what I think are the obvious pro's and cons.
The autofocus is superb a lot more precise than on the D2x the 51 point focus is excellent for things like kites flying against clear blue sky or any subject against an uncluttered background,the second there is anything else obvious behind it stops working and then its better to switch over to 9 or 21 point focus which is what mine lives on for follow focus on continuous focus mode,the metering is a lot more accurate than previous models and it stays on matrix mode which copes with all lighting conditions very well providing you have a knowledge of basic metering.
The high iso's are good with very little noise in comparison to older models up to 400 is great but over that and noise does become apparent,its essential to get exposure correct over 400 iso especially when using raw mode otherwise any adjustments to exposure in your editing software results in noise becoming a real problem.
Its a great camera,the extra magnification from the cropped sensor is a real help if your photographing birds with a 500 or 600 mm but can be a hinderence if you get that little bit too close.
The high frame rate is great but if you're shooting raw it stops very quickly and shots can be missed because of this.
The D300 is a great camera for wildlife,I use one with the D3(superb at low light levels,virtually no noise and a better buffer rate!) the D300 is used more for birds the D3 great for mammals.
The D300 is a great camera and I would thoroughly recommend it!

A simply superb camera. There's not really much I can say that Billabong Photos' review hasn't said.

This is a real alternative to a D3 at a third of the price, with a fantastic amount of features and customization possibilities.

From the moment I saw the first reviews of the D300 I knew it was the camera I had been waiting for. The price point initially made it hard for me to justify replacing my trusty D80 as there was nothing wrong with it and it was still serving me well, but the horde of additional features and improvements of the D300 led me to eventually take the plunge and order one. Since then my D300 has well and truly validated it's cost for me and then some, I could easily write several pages about the various features of the D300 so in the interests of not going too overboard I'll concentrate on some of the features which to me stand out as most important and ones I most value in upgrading from my old D80.

For a start this is one solid and well designed piece of kit, the whole thing feels very rugged and the layout of the controls is very intuative, all the important controls that I (and I suspect most people) need to change most often such are easily accessible and take mere seconds to adjust as required. The menu system is also very clear and well laid out, with a huge number of customisations and settings at your disposal (most of which I never touch but they are there for the person who wants to have control of every setting) and even the ability to have a series of presets if you wish.

The AF system is one standout point for me, I have my camera in continuous focus mode at all times as I mostly do photos of animals and I have yet to be disappointed with the accuracy and speed of the D300s focusing ability, plus 51 AF points with an 4 way control pad easily accessible under the thumb to move the active point without having to take your eye from the viewfinder makes framing the shot as you want it simple and easy.

The high ISO performance of the D300 is another point very worthy of note, with my D80 I didn't like taking the ISO much above 400 if I could help it as noise started to creep in at a noticable level, however with my D300, 400 is my default setting. The noise is virtually undetectable at that level so unless I am shooting in exceptionally bright conditions where I can consostently still get high shutter speeds at lower ISO settings, I default to 400 all the time, and if the light does fade I don't shy away from using higher ISOs. 800 still gives me pictures with barely detectable noise short of heavy cropping and I will happily bump the ISO up to 1600 to maintain higher shutter speeds without worrying too much about noise levels, as even that high, as long as photos aren't cropped too heavily the noise is controlled so well it doesn't really notice. It is only really if you start to creep towards ISO 3200 in low light conditions that the noise becomes a problem, and I have even taken a photo in good outdoor lighting at ISO 3200 by accident (I forgot to drop it back down to 400 after coming out of a room with very low light) and if I hadn't looked at the exif data I'd have thought I had taken it at ISO 400! Many other manufacturers are now offering cameras with insanely high ISO settings that can control the noise well but the D300 and it's big brother the D3 were the first to make this huge jump in performance over their predecesors (I believe the D3's perfoamance is even better than the D300's!) and to my knowledge, while it may have been equalled, nothing has yet overshadowed the performance of the D300 at this end of the market.

The shooting speed of the D300 is another thing I have found to be rather useful, although I always try and emphasise getting the right shot over shooting away and hoping for the best, I still find there are times when taking a sequence of shots of an action moment is helpful in the interest of making sure you don't miss that critical moment. For this the D300 is excellent, giving a 6fps fire rate out of the box with the option to upgrade this to 8fps if you have the optional battery grip attached with rechargable AAs or the adapter to allow you to use the same batteries the D3 uses. While I have tried the 8fps speed a few times to get as rapid a sequence of shots as possible, to be honest I find the 6fps more than adequate, certainly a vast and appreciated improvement over the 2-3fps speed I had with my D80 and I tend to favour this shooting mode whenever I am taking action shots, the buffer is also very good on the D300, I never normally take more than a handful of photos at a time but I have tested and managed a good few seconds of shooting at 6fps before it slowed down.

On top of all this I think it also goes without saying that the overall image quality you get from the D300 is simply fantastic, the Nikon exposure system is superb, the colour and contrast reproduction is excellent and even these can be customised in camera if you wish with several colour presets and an option to fully customise colour saturation, contrast and sharpness.

As stated before, there is plenty more I could talk about with the D300 but for me the most standout features, it's build quality, ease of use, customisation, flawless AF system, high ISO performance and high shooting speed, really revolutionised my photography and are the main features which for me make the D300 worth every penny I spent on it and the reasons it continues to bring a smile to my face every time I use it.

Really the only flaw I could possibly come up with is the simple fact that at over £1000 I suspect that most casual photographers would struggle to justify the cost, but for anybody who wants to take their photography seriously without going as far as true pro level DSLRs, unles you really avidly want a full frame sensor camera (which quite frankily if you did I don't know why you'd be looking at anything less than a pro level camera) I can't see how any photographer could want more than the D300 has to offer.

Been using the D300 for nearly a year now and yet to be disappointed with its performance. Of particular note are the quality of the images at high ISO setting and the intuitive positioning of all the buttons. Once you're familiar with the camera all major adjustments can be made without taking your eye from the viewfinder. The image quality is superb. I shoot j-peg and the amount of detail I get in the images is outstanding. Raw is here if you want it as well as the option to shoot both formats simultaneously. The build quality is superb and I've used it outside in some fairly wet conditions. Although supposedly not as well weather sealed as the D700 or D3 I have had no problems at all with leakage. I did buy the optional battery grip which has made it easier to shoot portrait hand held but without it the camera feels well balanced and the battery life is fairly good at well over 100 shots per battery cycle.
I upgraded from the D80 as I was looking to take my photography forward and if you are looking to take your photography up a notch or two I reckon this is the camera for you!

The Nikon D300 is something really rather special, and I could write a book on the pros / cons of this paticular body. Basically, its quite possibly the best crop-sensor body money can buy at the moment.

The ergonomics are good, although I think the grip could be a little better formed. Nikon are button-centric which I think is the best method, since you can both see and set your settings with a single glance and/or movement. I found the Canon system a little awkward to use in practice. As a semi-pro body there are a wealth of settings in the menu - fortunately you can store up to 5 settings 'banks'. I've set up settings for general use, tripod, and snapshots. I've found this plenty since the main exposure and metering settings are physical switches and dials on the body itself. I do find the body a little heavy when combined with anything but the lightest of lenses.

The autofocus is fantastic - best in the class by miles. The 51 points means focusing & recomposing is a thing of the past. The tracking functionality is brilliant, once locked on the camera will follow your subject. I've had no big tracking issues so far - in fact its the first body that's actually tracked reliably for me. Full-auto mode automatically picks up faces if you want to take some quick snaps of people in good light. It doesn't pick up faces quite so well in poor or mixed lighting. You can also tweak the focus per-lens to solve front & back focusing issues. Truth be told I haven't had to use it yet, but a quick test shows it to be a very fine adjustment that will require care to perform correctly.

Image quality is brilliant. I've found the latitude for editing in-camera is outstanding - to the point that JPEGs out of the camera can closely match my 'standard' post-processing results. Built-in compensation for chromatic abberation works brilliantly with any lens. You can also shoot RAW, but 'develop' in-camera using all sorts of different settings allowing you to experiment away from a PC. The original RAW isn't modified.

Metering is largely spot-on, something of a breath of fresh air. Often I have to use exposure compensation liberally, but with the D300 it often nails the exposure straight away; even in rather harsh lighting conditions.

Build quality is solid, and the materials used are high quality. The grip has a nice 'somewhat sticky' rubbery grip that allows for confident holding of the body. The recent snow allowed me to test the weather-sealing of the body. I can say it stood up to blizzards admirably. I covered the body and lens with a plastic bag, but the rear of the body was open to the elements. It was so wet that the viewfinder was collecting pools of water where I held the body lens-down. Suffice it to say there were no issues, the water didn't leak through and the body still works perfectly!

Ultimately an outstanding body!

The best SLR camera that Nikon make.
Build quality much better than D90.
DX lenses affordable, they fit the D300 but not suitable for D700 which need expensive FX lenses
D3X is far too expensive and bulky
Suitable for Action shots (6 shots per second and fast auto focus)
Excellent in low light conditions. ISO 3200 acceptable
Best all round lens is the 18-200
VR works well
Menu s easy to use
Battery life good

I had some focusing issues with D80 and Tokina 12-24, now with D300 there are absolutely no problems. I am quite satisfied with D300