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.)