Big gun, little 'un

A bunch of people (well, okay, two of you) wanted an update on the Nikon D300. Did I end up buying it after all?

Well ... YES! I did.

I finally managed to put the order in successfully and bought the camera. I also bought a longer zoom lens, the Nikon 18-200 VR. The "VR" stands for "Vibration Reduction". There are sonic motors in the lens that vibrate one of the lens elements, the degree of which depends on how shaky you are holding it, which in turn dampens that shakiness. It seems to work! (see example below)

I was tempted to order it from either Adorama or Ritz, two huge US camera stores that are currently offering excellent prices on the D300/18-200 combo. But Nikon USA is not the same as Nikon Canada (I was warned about warranty issues) and I would've had to pay duty and brokerage charges and more GST, yada, yada, yada, so I opted for a Canadian supplier.

The best price in Canada I found was at Vistek but I would've only saved about $50 over Blacks and Blacks has a 60 day lowest price guarantee. If you find any advertised price in Canada that's lower than what you paid within 60 days of purchase, Blacks will make up the difference. They also offer their own image management software and free prints with each order, plus a DVD that has 1200 pages of info on all things photographically digital. So, I stayed with Blacks.

First blush

Here's the visual side by side comparison ...

 
D300 with AF-S Nikkor 18-200 VR and D40 with kit AF-S Nikkor 18-55

The D300 is twice the camera and twice the weight when compared to the D40. I was going to get the 18-200 lens, anyway, and planned to use it on both cameras, if I kept both bodies. On the D40, though, this lens throws the whole thing out of balance. It's like putting a V8 engine into a Pinto. Vaarooooom! It feels more balanced on the D300, but either way, it makes it necessary to support the assemblage by the lens. No more one-handed shooting.

The D300 is more complicated, too. If you can figure out how to attach the lens and install the battery and memory card on the D40, you're in business. The Quick Start Guide for the D40 is a fold-out sheet that explains everything from attaching the camera strap to loading the software to putting on a slide show on TV. The Quick Start Guide for the D300 is a 40 page booklet and barely covers what's in the numerous menus. Although most things are intuitive, to fully understand what you can do (there's a lot of customization available), you have to read through the 400+ page manual.

But does it take better pictures?

I've only had it for 48 hours and I've only had time to take one 10 minute stroll around the block, so I'm not entirely sure. Like Lance Armstrong, though, who says, "It's Not About the Bike", I believe it's not about the camera. A camera is a tool for recording what you see out there. One isn't better than the other, but it may offer easier ways to do things you do regularly that another one can't do at all.

When I'm shooting colour I like really saturated colour, the Velvia look. One of the big reasons I wanted a D300 was for its superior rendering of beautifully saturated, vivid colour. Others may think them a bit garish. (I ought to mention the pics on this blog look good on my monitor, but are a bit on the "high" side on my monitor at work. I'm trying to figure out how to compensate for this.) The D300 promises to offer up the Velvia look without having to resort to Photoshopping each image.

Before heading out I managed to navigate through the Shooting Menu to the Picture Control settings and changed it from Standard to Vivid, and then modified that to the most saturated possible rendering.

Here's what the colours look like right out of the camera without any Photoshop manipulation. The colours are much more saturated in the photos than they appeared to the eye at the time. Beautiful!