I have had the D300 for 18 days now, and have seldom had the chance to get outside with it. That is mostly because of the extreme cold temperatures here in Britain for the last couple of weeks. I don’t think it is too cold for the camera, or for me. It is my six month old baby girl I am concerned about.
One of the big changes from the Sony or the Hasselblad has been the addition of more settings than the standard B&W or Sepia settings the Sony had. (Obviously the Hasselblad required a change of film for these results.) The D300 has quite a few setting that affect the colouring of the image, and some require me to shoot in those settings, while others can be edited in camera post shooting.
Naturally, if you forget what you had set in the day before, and you walk all the way up Fort Royal Hill, shoot some pictures, then walk down again with a hungry baby howling for food, well let’s just say the results may not be what was expected.
I have now got hold of a Polarizer filter for the lens, so that should help out with sky; window, water, car, and other shots. Also on the way is a spare battery to prevent me running out of power in the middle of a shoot. I also have a spare CF card now. I got an 8GB last week. I ordered an Extreme IV from Bigpockets.co.uk, but they sent me an Extreme III. It doesn’t give me the full speed of the camera, but I can hit 6 frames per second for 15 shots running before I get lag. I will still keep my eye open for an Extreme IV, but I got this one with a partial refund for the wrong item sent at only £5.00, so I can’t much complain.
Though my lens is low end, I figure I can get started with it, it makes a great travel lens, and it is low cost if anything goes wrong bashing it around. Further, I can rent for this camera at a reasonable price. Plus, it has a decent wide angle view to it for those round town shots I want here in the UK before we leave for America. Here is an example of a shot I took just over the road from the Slug and Lettuce in Worcester.
Again, it is not a perfect lens, but for my personal photos, it beat waiting another year before I can afford high end glass, leaving me with nothing to photograph with. There are a lot of people out there who are great photographers that advise people to go for good glass first, then worry about a high end camera. I took it in, then felt I needed a camera I would be excited enough to buy glass for. Plus, it had to be able to last long enough, not just against future upgraded models that will be released, but also physically in the demanding environments I tend to end up in. We are headed from rainy England later this year towards the deserts of Nevada, and California. The Mojave is no mystery to me, I know it is a hell on earth for gear like this. The D300 has good seals and is water resistant. I think that will help. I don’t have the advantage of being able to run back to a car in a sudden downpour. I am usually on a bike, or worse yet, on foot.
So there are a few tings I need to work out for myself before I can give a full view of how happy I am with this beast. Mine came out of the box with a dead pixel that I will need to resolve under my UK warranty. That means I will likely spend a week or more without it when I am willing to give it up for such a repair. I need to be sure to get in the habit of checking my shooting settings for every new subject, and I should set up the custom shooting styles for what works best in the situations I find myself in. All that done, I think I will be able to give a good review of the camera.
Following are some shots I have down with the D300 so far. Some are with a Gorilla Pod DSLR. Some are with on-camera flash ( I do not yet have an attachment flash). All are with my hundred pounds eBay lens. Many are hand held. Most are shot at ISO 200 because I like clean shots, and I use tripods to make them rather than high ISO’s most of the time.
