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The Luminous Landscape recently posted an article called “Nikon D3 / D300 Vs. Canon,” which is designed to share Michael’s experiences buying into Nikon DSLRs after shooting with Canon for many years. He’s not switching brands, he just felt that he had enough readers interested in Nikons that he should be more familiar with them.

This gives us a very valuable and rare kind of review, which is able to focus on ergonomics and usability comparisons. I’d recommend visiting LL and reading the whole thing. But if you want my summary, I’ll do that as well.

The feature comparison starts with mirror lock-up, criticizing Canon for not making it easily available, and criticizing Nikon for not letting you use the self-timer and mirror lock-up at the same time. Personally, that’s not a big issue for me.

But Michael’s second issue has long been my main complaint with Canon and one of the things that Nikon does well: auto ISO. Some recent Canons do have this, but it’s been a long time coming, and still isn’t as flexible as what Nikon has provided for years. Michael writes:

The way Nikon implements it is to allow the user to set the lowest ISO that he or she wishes to use, and also the highest. The lowest shutter speed for the camera to automatically use also may be preset.

From then on the camera, whether set to Aperture Priority, Manual, or full Program mode,the camera will adjust the exposure parameters as usual, but, when the light level falls so low that the camera’s minimum lens aperture is reached, and the shutter speed is as low as you have set it to go, the camera will then automatically increase the ISO as much as needed to fall within these parameters. The ISO being set is always visible on the top LCD as well as in the viewfinder.

He also takes the opportunity to briefly pixel peep and comment on the stunning high ISO performance of the Nikon D3, which is very drool-worthy if you ask me.

And then there’s the increasingly dreaded autofocus mode selector on the D3, which people seem to keep accidentally bumping, often switching the camera from autofocus to manual focus without meaning to. Michael reports that this has happened to him often as well (“at least a couple of times a day.”)

A few other differences between them, such as Nikon DSLRs showing you the number of photos remaining on the inserted memory card even when the camera is turned off, which Canon doesn’t do. And the high resolution LCD screen on the D3 and D300, which he describes as a useful improvement.

He prefers the Nikon method of implementing dual memory card slots, since both are CF; current Camera 1-series cameras have two slots, but one is SD, which complicates things for professional photographers.

He gives thumbs down to the lack of anti-dust vibration in the Nikon D3, but does mention that he hasn’t accumulated any dust at all after shooting 1,500 frames with it.

And in the end — after other comparisons which I’m skipping over — he’s surprised by how many advantages the new Nikon cameras have over Canon:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but after being away from Nikon for the better part of a decade and having been immersed in the Canon gestalt since then, I was frankly surprised at the extent to which current Nikon cameras offer feature and function advantages over Canon. While some of the ones mentioned above may not be relevant to any one photographer’s needs, there are bound to be several which can be real productivity aids, if not just downright fun to have and use.

I do have to say I’m pretty surprised at the importance he places on buying new cameras, however, especially considering that the site often seems to be more focused on good photography than random technological qubbles:

No pro is going to show up on a shoot with gear that’s two generations behind the competition, and few except the most skint amateurs are happy to sit on the sidelines while better tools become available.

I don’t really buy that. I don’t know about what a pro is going to do, because that’s not my world, but I’m perfectly happy with my now-aging Digital Rebel XT, even though I could afford to sell it and buy a newer model. And I’m sure there are tons of great photographers taking tons of great pictures with cheap old cameras.

We now have a bit of a sea change happening. Nikon has flexed its considerable muscle and with the D3 produced a camera that sends a clear challenge to Canon’s nearly decade-long dominance of the digital arena. The D300, though in many ways simply a logical progression from the D200, is a much better camera than its predecessor, and along with its superior sensor offers the pro and advanced amateur a set of features and functionality that is unmatched at the moment in Canon’s line up.

For its part the full-frame Nikon D3 is a direct challenge to Canon’s 1 Series, which has dominated the pro marketplace now for more than half a decade. The 1D MKIII is right in the D3′s bore sight, and the D3 matches it or surpasses it in IQ, sensitivity, and resolution.

Canon’s flagship the 1DsMKIII certainly is the currently king of the hill in terms of resolution, but if Nikon were to put a full frame chip with the D300′s pixel density into a D3 chassis they’d have a 24MP – 29MP camera that would likely satisfy a great many Nikonistas who have been lusting after a full frame pro camera to match Canon’s lead in resolution. If you were Nikon, wouldn’t you build one?

The next couple of years should be very interesting.

Hooray for interesting digital camera developments! It’s pretty amazing to think of all of the advances that have happened in just the last 10 years; can anyone imagine what we’ll have in just 10 more? Maybe intelligent robotic camera dogs that wander around, peeing on fire hydrants and taking pictures on their own, and transmitting those photos to our own personal satellites to avoid draconian privacy invasions by the government? Ah, the future…

Do you know Scott Kelby? He’s the editor and publisher of both Photoshop User Magazine and Layers magazine, and is president of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). He recently wrote about his new Nikon D300, and it turns out that he’s kind of totally in love with the camera.

Why?

Well, there’s a long list of reasons in his post, but here they are in a nutshell (a special holiday nut’s shell, if you wish):

• The 51-point AF, which he says is “much better, faster, and more accurate than the D200′s.”
• The Live View. Like me, he dismissed it as something as would never use (ok, I put Live View in the “hardly ever use” category, but still close). He loves the white balance preview that you get, however, where you can scroll through the WB settings and see their effect live on the LCD preview.
• Likes the large shooting setting display on the rear LCD, saying it’s easier to read (especially when the camera’s on a tripod) than the standard top-panel LCD.
• Lower noise: “I have found that to me, the noise level when shooting at 800ISO on a D300 is like shooting at 400 ISO on a D200. That’s an appreciable difference, but I’ve been so spoiled at shooting at 6400 ISO on a D3 (whose noise looks more like the D300 at 800 ISO, to me anyway). So, lower noise for sure, but not D3-ish low noise.” I’m always a fan of low noise at high ISO.
• A few usability praises for the dials, including their flexibility to assign them to do what you want.
• The nice LCD
• Improved auto white balance: “In fact, I think it’s easily the best Auto White Balance I’ve ever used.” That sounds pretty sweet.
• HDMI output, loving the display on a high definition TV. I need someone to buy me an HD TV and a D300 (I’d also accept a Nikon D3) so I can evaluate the HDMI display for myself.

And let’s not forget that biggie, image quality, which — big surprise — Scott also loves:

The color is outstanding (better than any Nikon I’ve ever used, and the color rendering is nearly on par with the D3’s). This camera just produces beautiful images, plain and simple, and if you want really saturated colors, you can pump up the saturation with some amazing results (perfect for the Velvia freak deep inside us all).

He does have a few negative points about the Nikon D300, such as a few rows of information preventing him from seeing the full image on the full screen when reviewing images. It sounds like there’s no LCD display mode that’s just the image with nothing else? That’s kind of surprising. Am I misunderstanding his gripe?

He’d also like a full-screen histogram-only display, and would like still lower noise, although it sounds like he might have been spoiled by too much shooting with the Nikon D3. Who knew that using a D3 too much would be a bad thing?

He thinks the D300′s battery grip is clunkier than the D200′s was, he doesn’t like the Focus Mode selector button (it gets accidentally switched a lot). And to shoot tethered you need to buy Nikon Camera Control Pro 2 at around $160, while Canon shooters get free tethered software. And to top it off, the Nikon software doesn’t work with Mac OS Leopard.

But in the end, he loves it, and it hard-pressed to think of any reasons for him to keep using his Nikon D2X over the D300, and as a result he’s selling the D2X. In short, he really likes the camera.

Be sure to check out Scott’s full post about the camera, as well as all the comments (48 of them so far.)

Jeff Kellor at DCResource stayed up until 3:00 am posting his review of the new Nikon D300. What does he say about it? Let’s find out.

First off, the battery life is excellent. You should get 1,000 shots on one charge, a huge improvement over the Nikon D200′s estimated 340 shots per charge, and a decent improvement over the Canon 40D’s 800 shots. Assuming you shoot more like a regular person than a CIPA test — for example, not using a flash — you should get even better results. This is assuming you’re not using live view, though.

He likes the magnesium allow build: “the D300 doesn’t let you forget that it’s an $1800 camera.” He also says that the grip is well-sized.

The live view sounds decent, aside from the slow contrast-based auto focus system and the lack of a live histogram:

So how does it look? Quite good, in my opinion. The view is bright, and incredibly sharp on the 3-inch LCD. Low light visibility isn’t great with the screen at its default brightness, but it gets better if you max it out (there’s a shortcut in live view mode to do quickly adjust the brightness). In both of the live view modes, you can zoom in on an area of the frame to make sure that your subject is properly focused. While you can preview white balance in live view mode, exposure is not simulated (the image always looks the same, regardless of the shutter speed or aperture). On a related note, there’s no live histogram available here, which some of the other live view D-SLRs offer.

Also, you can’t use live view and the self-timer function at the same time. That seems like a weird and arbitrary limitation, but there you have it.

One interesting bit to note is that the continuous shooting speed drops considerably if you’re shooting 14-bit RAW NEF files. In this review, shooting RAW, JPEGs, or RAW+JPEG ran at about 5.9 fps shooting speed (this is without the battery grip, which should bump that up to 8 fps.) However, shooting 14-bit RAW dropped that burst speed down to just 2.5 fps.

I’ve always been jealous of Nikon’s auto ISO function, which my Canon Digital Rebel XT doesn’t have, and which seems like a basic photography control that you want on a digital camera. The D300′s sounds easy and covers what you want it to do:

The D300 lets you set the ISO manually, ranging from 200 to 3200, with low (ISO 100) and high (ISO 6400) options available. It also has an auto ISO mode available. You set the slowest shutter speed and the highest sensitivity that you want the camera to use, and it does the rest.

On to ISO noise performance. The D300 gives a very respectable performance in the night test, even if it can’t quite hit the ridiculous ISO levels of it’s bigger brother, the Nikon D3:

You can see some minute amounts of noise at ISO 400 and 800, but it’s barely noticeable. Noise starts to pick up at ISO 1600, reducing your print size to small or medium, though you may be able to go larger if you shoot in RAW and use noise reduction software. At ISO 3200, the image has a kind of blotchy appearance from noise and presumably noise reduction. You may be able to squeeze out a small print at this sensitivity with a little help from NR software. There’s too much detail lost at ISO 6400 (H1.0) for the photo to be of much use.

NIght shots are hard to compare (since conditions are never consistent), but I’m thinking that the D300 did better than the Canon EOS-40D in this test. Both the D300 and the 40D wiped the floor with the Sony Alpha DSLR-A700, which isn’t so hot in low light at high sensitivities.

The studio ISO noise test they do also shows the D300 coming through with flying colors:

This is why I love digital SLRs — the D300 produces buttery-smooth, noise-free images through ISO 800. At ISO 1600 do we start to see some noise, but it’s barely there. At ISO 3200 the noise becomes noticeable, but it’s still quite low overall. That trend continues at ISO 6400, but the results are definitely still usable, especially if you’re shooting RAW. Just send those photos through noise reduction software and you’ll get yourself some nice 4 x 6 inch prints. Once again, I think the D300 beats both the 40D and the A700 in terms of high ISO performance — and I think you’ll agree if you compare the test photos.

Jeff mentions that the D300′s photos are soft out-of-the-camera, which isn’t unusual for a DSLR, especially Nikon. You still have a lot of detail in the files, though, and a little unsharp mask in Photoshop will bring them out. Or, just bump up the in-camera sharpening level, if you don’t like to do it on the computer.

The exposure seems to often be on the bright side, which is something to keep in mind:

Another issue I found is that the camera seemed to overexpose by 1/3 to 2/3 of a stop fairly often, so I quickly became familiar with the D300′s bracketing feature.

Or just shoot with -2/3 exposure compensation dialed in, and hope you’re not losing too much dynamic range at the high end of the histogram.

Interestingly, he reports that he couldn’t see any difference between the 12-bit and 14-bit RAW files:

One of the selling points of the D300 is to record 14-bit RAW files, which allows the camera to capture more color data. I took a photo of the test scene at both 12 and 14-bits, stared at them for awhile, and couldn’t see a difference. If you want to see for yourself, then feel free to download the 12-bit and 14-bit RAW files.

I haven’t had a chance to download the originals myself to look at, but I’ll be doing that soon, and would be interested to hear anyone else’s opinions about it; feel free to leave comments below.

In the end, he’s very pleased with the camera, calling it a strong competitor to the Canon 40D. A few negative points that he mentions include:

• Images are soft at default settings; camera tends to overexpose
• Battery grip (and proper battery configuration) required for 8 fps continuous shooting
• No exposure preview, live histogram, or self-timer in live view mode
• Sluggish contrast detect AF in tripod live view mode
• Continuous shooting burst rate drops to 2.5 fps when shooting 14-bit NEFs
• Flimsy door over memory card slot
• Remote capture software not included (Canon and Sony bundle theirs)
• Most expensive midrange D-SLR

There you have it. Be sure to check out the full review for all the details and a bunch of full resolution sample photos.

The cameralabs.com website has posted a review of the new Nikon D300 digital SLR camera. Let’s jump right to the image quality comparison, in which they shot the same scene with a D300 (using a Nikkor DX 17-55mm f2.8 lens), and a Sony A700 (with the Sony DT 16-80mm lens.)

There’s a clear difference in the images when using their default settings and shooting JPEGs:

It’s immediately apparent from the crops below that the output from the D300 is noticeably softer than that of the Sony Alpha A700, when both cameras are set to their default JPEG settings. Of course there are differences in the optics used here, but with both bodies fitted with high quality zooms, the major difference is with in-camera processing – particularly in terms of sharpening and contrast. Boost the D300′s – or indeed reduce the A700′s – and the images can look very similar. It is interesting to note how their respective Auto White Balance settings have produced noticeably different results though with the D300 JPEG looking warmer than the A700s.

For the record, the A700 white balance looks more accurate to me — although you need to take that with a grain of salt since I wasn’t on site when they were shooting these and don’t know how it should look. But, having said that, the snow on the mountains in the D300 scene isn’t as accurately white as the snow in the A700′s photo.

Shooting RAW with the D300 gives significantly sharper output, although they aren’t clear on what settings they used to convert the RAW image:

The crop from the RAW file is noticeably sharper than the JPEG using the default settings, and of course there’s a lot of potential for further adjustment in Capture NX. As you’ll see in our results and gallery pages, the default JPEG output from the D300 can be a little soft, but this is in-line with most higher-end DSLRs which expect the owners to either tweak the in-camera settings or perform further adjustments later. Certainly the output from the D300′s RAW files converted using Capture NX can look excellent, and was much preferred to the default JPEG settings.

For noise performance, they compared the D300 with the A700 again, and also with a Canon 5D. The 5D isn’t really in the same league; with its full-frame sensor, the noise is much reduced and the detail is greater, and it outperforms the D300 and A700 fairly easily. So the review pretty much ignores the Canon 5D results as being too good to compare with the others (Canon fanboys can start eating their cake at this point), and compares the D300 with the A700. The result is that they give different results, but the review is hard-pressed to say that one is performing better than the other, stating instead that it’s really down to personal taste. Be sure to check out the actual image comparisons in the review to see how you feel about the noise performance.

In other features, the reviewer is very pleased with the 100% frame coverage of the Nikon D300′s viewfinder:

The D300 may have the same 0.94x magnification as its predecessor but Nikon’s upgraded the coverage from 95% to a full 100%. It’s a joy to frame your shot knowing what you see is exactly what you’re going to get, and it’s a feature normally reserved for top-of-the-range pro models. It’s also a nice step-up from the 95% coverage of the Canon EOS 40D and Sony Alpha A700.

They also find the autofocus to be full-featured and well-implemented:

With the D300 set to Continuous shooting and the nine-point dynamic area, it effectively tracked and photographed vehicles approaching face-on at 40kph, over a 100m stretch with 100% accuracy, using the DX 17-55mm f2.8 zoomed-into 55mm. Set to 51-point 3D-tracking, it coped with tennis players quickly moving around the frame, with the focus point visibly following them through the viewfinder with pretty decent accuracy. As always you’ll need a quick lens for the best success, but with the D300, Nikon’s really got fast-action covered.

On to the negative points. The LCD screen was hard to see at sharp angles or in direct sunlight, which limits the usefulness for live view. The contrast-based autofocus was slow, and the Panasonic L10, which also has contrast-based AF in live view, was much faster. The reviewer is very unhappy with the lack of a live histogram in live view, which other DSLRs have. Knowing that your exposure will be perfect seems like one of the big advantages to using live view, and it’s disappointing that the D300 doesn’t have that.

They also report that the anti-dust system wasn’t effective, but point out that most anti-dust systems aren’t.

In terms of Nikon users considering an upgrade, they point out that the resolution isn’t really much improved over the Nikon D80 or Nikon D200, and that if you upgrade, “you’d be upgrading for build, handling and features” rather than image quality. They also point out that it’s more expensive than rivals without giving better image quality; you’re paying 40-50% more than a Canon 40D or Sony A700, but getting roughly the same image quality, albeit with some more features and better ergonomics.

But they conclude that it’s an excellent camera, and receives the “highly recommended” label, with the caveats mentioned earlier:

But unless you’ve already bought into the Nikon system, we’d advise closely comparing it to the rivals mentioned above. The D300’s features may on the whole be a step-ahead of the competition, but you may not personally need them, in which case your money is better spent on a cheaper body with better glass.

All in all a very good review. Be sure to check it out for the full details and sample photos.