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.