The ergonomics are certainly different, and will take some time to learn. The whole camera, especially with the battery grip, is bigger and my fingers don't fall to the buttons like they learned to do with the D70.
For example, on the D70 you push up/down on the multi-direction control to scroll through saved photos, and left/right to change the info. displayed over each photo. It's exactly opposite on the D300.
I like the ergos though. They're clearly better. I just need to unlearn old habits.
Add me to list of D300 owners, No cat pics in the livingroom though.
Bless you
Harry http://behret.smugmug.com/NANPA member How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb? 50. One to change the bulb, and forty-nine to say, "I could have done that better!"
Harry http://behret.smugmug.com/NANPA member How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb? 50. One to change the bulb, and forty-nine to say, "I could have done that better!"
I've really been liking my D300's handling, overall performance, responsiveness, and fine image quality at EI 3200 (or any other speed, for that matter.)
But since getting it late last November, I had a few peculiar episodes. I'd be shooting with what I knew to be a fully-charged battery, and the top-panel LCD would indicate full charge. But then, sometimes during shooting and sometimes during playback on the LCD, the camera would lock up and the battery indicator would show no charge. Most recently (last night) this happened with three different batteries, all of which I knew to be fully charged when I began the shooting session!
Generally turning the camera off and back on would get it going again (with the battery indicator again showing full charge.) But I also had a couple of more disturbing incidents that I didn't put together until recently.
First, last month, after photographing a university production of The Nutcracker, I got home, downloaded my memory cards, and found that a huge block of shots was missing! I knew I had made a lot more pictures of the second act than I was seeing on the computer. I had been using both the D300 and a D80, and wasn't sure whether the missing shots were from one or both; my most likely thought was that I had gotten the "shot" and "unshot" memory cards mixed up and formatted one that contained the shots.
Fortunately, I recently had bought a Sandisk card that had come with a copy of their RescuePro software. I installed it, ran it on all the cards, and all the missing shots came back! Yay!
So, the low battery problem had only happened once or twice, and was easy to solve (turn camera off and back on) and I thought the data loss was a fluke... until last night, when both of them happened at once.
This time I was doing a studio shoot, and after only about 30 frames, when I tried to review some shots on the LCD, I got the low-battery and camera lockup trick. I knew this battery had displayed as fully charged on the LCD just moments before! I put in my fully-charged spare battery; no improvement. I got the battery out of my backup D80 and tried it; no improvement.
Finally, I took out the last battery and wiped off its electrical contacts. At the same time I put in a different memory card. Suddenly the camera was cured, and the rest of the session went normally.
I reviewed the shots on a laptop with the director after the shoot, and we picked some images. It wasn't until I got home that I realized we had never seen several setups -- they seemed to be missing from the cards. One card -- the one that had been in the camera when the low-battery thing happened -- only showed 13 files on it!... although I knew there had to be more. RescuePro came to the rescue again -- I ran it on the suspect card, and it found the missing shots.
But I was suspicious now that I had seen the low-battery thing and the data-loss thing happen together. Did I have a bad memory card that was triggering a spurious low-battery message from the camera? Did I have a dodgy battery that was throwing off the camera's power-management system? Or was the problem with the camera itself?
At this point I want to say that old-fashioned family-owned camera stores rock. I had bought my D300 from the local store, and after the first weird low-battery episode I had mentioned it to my salesman. He had emailed his Nikon tech rep but didn't get any useful info; he suggested I just keep an eye on it to see if the problem recurred.
So after last night's act-up I called him and described what had happened. This afternoon, at his suggestion, I brought the camera out to the store after work, along with my "problem" memory card and suspect battery. We put both of them into another D300 and it seemed to work fine.
But by then my camera was working fine, too. (This had never been anything other than a rare, sporadic problem.) I asked the salesman if he wanted to contact Nikon again, or if I should keep monitoring the situation, or what.
"Nah, I don't want to risk that," he said. "I'd better just swap it out for another camera."
So, now he's got my ex-D300, which is going to go back to the store's Nikon rep along with an earful or two, and I have a new-in-the-box replacement D300. I really like the way these cameras handle and shoot, and I hope my experience with the first one was just a weird fluke. No, it doesn't shake my confidence in Nikon -- I've had bad-out-of-the-box cameras from Canon, Minolta, Contax (my first G2) and Leica (an M4-P that would rip film!) and all of those worked out okay eventually.
As of right now, though, I'm using the D300's interval-timer feature to give the new one a good shakedown: five-shot bursts at 30-second intervals for a couple of hours, followed by two-shot bursts at 3-second intervals for a half-hour or so. It's clicking away in the other room as I write this. If that works out, I think I'll be able to be pretty confident that I've got a good one this time.
And my advice to other new D300 owners would be to shoot a lot right away, and if you notice any weird battery behavior or lost data, take your camera back and have it checked out.
The same happened to me on the first day of shooting. It was not my camera at all but my VR lens. Went over to the Nikon repair center with the camera and the lens and spoke to the repair tech. He said it was possible that it was the lens so I left it with him and took the camera home. It has not happened since with any of my non VR lens or any of my VR lens including the one that was repaired. Have your lens checked out if it is a VR
I`m no big fan of RAW so i mainly shoot in jpeg and i must say i`m very impressed by the results straight out of the camera produced by the D300 , especially if you set the jpeg compression feature in the menu to "optimal quality" instead of "size priority".
It`s astonishing to notice that some jpeg come out at a size of around 20mb , makes you think what does it deliver less then RAW
Really amazing camera , great at ISO 1600 and still good at ISO 3200. :ivar
Nikon D300 Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G ED-IF AF-S DX Tamron 90mm SP AF DI f/2.8 Macro
SB-800
SanDisk Extreme IV 4Gb
Manfrotto 714SHB digi
Lowepro Bag
Archos 500
Corel Paint Shop Pro XI
D200 question w/ the advent of the D300
I know all models of cameras depreciate value at certain speeds. I was just wondering what you people that already own high end cameras think about what's going to happen w/ the price of the D200 since the 300 is getting such rave reviews and it's pretty obvious you CAN'T take good pictures w/o it(j/k).
Did the D200 get reviews like this over the D100?
I know all models of cameras depreciate value at certain speeds. I was just wondering what you people that already own high end cameras think about what's going to happen w/ the price of the D200 since the 300 is getting such rave reviews and it's pretty obvious you CAN'T take good pictures w/o it(j/k).
Did the D200 get reviews like this over the D100?
Thoughts?
The D200 garnered a series of rave reviews and was a definite advance over the D100. The price for a used D200 has dropped below $1000 and the price for a new body is around $1300 -$1400.
The D200 was and still is one of the bets bargains out there.
Harry http://behret.smugmug.com/NANPA member How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb? 50. One to change the bulb, and forty-nine to say, "I could have done that better!"
The ergonomics are certainly different, and will take some time to learn. The whole camera, especially with the battery grip, is bigger and my fingers don't fall to the buttons like they learned to do with the D70.
For example, on the D70 you push up/down on the multi-direction control to scroll through saved photos, and left/right to change the info. displayed over each photo. It's exactly opposite on the D300.
I like the ergos though. They're clearly better. I just need to unlearn old habits.
You can set these to be like the D70 if that is what you are used to
Comments
The ergonomics are certainly different, and will take some time to learn. The whole camera, especially with the battery grip, is bigger and my fingers don't fall to the buttons like they learned to do with the D70.
For example, on the D70 you push up/down on the multi-direction control to scroll through saved photos, and left/right to change the info. displayed over each photo. It's exactly opposite on the D300.
I like the ergos though. They're clearly better. I just need to unlearn old habits.
"Birding" with my old 18-70 kit lens is difficult, even with city birds.
I will be going to the local zoo this weekend to play. :ivar
Bless you
http://behret.smugmug.com/ NANPA member
How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb? 50. One to change the bulb, and forty-nine to say, "I could have done that better!"
Just for that:
http://monicarooney.smugmug.com/
...
:yikes
http://behret.smugmug.com/ NANPA member
How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb? 50. One to change the bulb, and forty-nine to say, "I could have done that better!"
The same happened to me on the first day of shooting. It was not my camera at all but my VR lens. Went over to the Nikon repair center with the camera and the lens and spoke to the repair tech. He said it was possible that it was the lens so I left it with him and took the camera home. It has not happened since with any of my non VR lens or any of my VR lens including the one that was repaired. Have your lens checked out if it is a VR
Nikon D4, Nikon D3, Nikon D3
Nikon 14-24 f2.8, Nikon 24-70 f2.8, Nikon 70-200 f2.8 VR II, Nikon 50 f1.8, Nikon 85 f1.4
Nikon 300 f2.8 VR, Nikon 200-400 f4.0 VR II, Nikon 600 f4.0 II, TC-1.4, TC 1.7, TC 2.0
(1) SB-800, (2) SB-900, (4) Multi Max Pocket Wizards
It`s astonishing to notice that some jpeg come out at a size of around 20mb , makes you think what does it deliver less then RAW
Really amazing camera , great at ISO 1600 and still good at ISO 3200. :ivar
Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G ED-IF AF-S DX
Tamron 90mm SP AF DI f/2.8 Macro
SB-800
SanDisk Extreme IV 4Gb
Manfrotto 714SHB digi
Lowepro Bag
Archos 500
Corel Paint Shop Pro XI
I know all models of cameras depreciate value at certain speeds. I was just wondering what you people that already own high end cameras think about what's going to happen w/ the price of the D200 since the 300 is getting such rave reviews and it's pretty obvious you CAN'T take good pictures w/o it
Did the D200 get reviews like this over the D100?
Thoughts?
The D200 garnered a series of rave reviews and was a definite advance over the D100. The price for a used D200 has dropped below $1000 and the price for a new body is around $1300 -$1400.
The D200 was and still is one of the bets bargains out there.
http://behret.smugmug.com/ NANPA member
How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb? 50. One to change the bulb, and forty-nine to say, "I could have done that better!"
You can set these to be like the D70 if that is what you are used to
http://www.michaelhelbigphotography.com
http://www.thewildpig.blogspot.com