Product Listing

Preview - Nikon D3 and Nikon D300

By Justin Ong, Adrian Chan & Ng Chong Seng - 24 Aug 2007

New Sensor and New Speed

New Sensor and New Speed

Taking charge of capturing all the light and color information is a brand new 12.3-megapixel sensor taken from Nikon's new range of DX Format CMOS sensors. Image resolution maxes out at a sweet 4,288 by 2,848 pixels but it's the depth of color that really caught our attention. The processing speed and performance of Nikon's new EXPEED image processing concept proved to be the key contributor here, producing clean and smooth gradations of shadow and highlights in each color field.

Not just any ordinary card slot, but UDMA CF card slot.

Equally astounding is the speed at which data from the 12.3-megapixel CMOS sensor is written to CF card. With high-speed CF cards such as the Kingston's new 4 and 8GB Ultimate 233x editions, shooting speed of 6 frames a second is easily achievable. Attach a multi-power battery pack and the D300 could even manage 8 frames a second, but the impression of speed doesn't just end there. Now that the D300 supports high-speed UDMA CF cards, sports photographers will be eager to put its 100-frame, full 12.3-megapixel resolution continuous shooting to good use.

Helping you to preview your shots and to harness all the functions of the D300 is a new 3-inch TFT LCD screen with 920,000 dots. Having a large screen is complementary to Nikon's renowned user interface and also a huge plus considering the D300 offers a wide range of adjustments and setups. A new addition called 'Retouch Menu' in particular makes full use of the space offered by the LCD to let you perform image editing on the camera. The D-Lighting control here allows you three choices on increasing or decreasing the density of your captured image, there are also controls to allow red eye reduction, trim, monochrome effects, filter effects, colour balance fine tuning and image overlay options also located under this menu.

Colour Spaces on the D300 come in AdobeRGB and sRGB. Previously Nikon had another menu item called Colour Mode, which users elected either colour space I, II or II. Now, this menu item has been replaced by Picture Control, which allows users to customize their colour modes based on the these options: Vivid, Neutral, Standard, and Monochrome. To explain it simpler, it�s like the good old days when there were different types of films that produced different results regardless the camera used. The same concept has been adopted by Nikon here. Using Picture Control, you will be able to achieve the results that you desire, and all you need to do is to copy those settings and transfer them to another camera that you are using.

Metering wise, the options offered by the D300 are fairly standard, selectable from the very capable Nikon TTL 1005 pixel RGB 3D Colour Matrix Metering II, center weighted and spot metering.

'Lv' on the dial denotes Live view.

Catching up and finally making its debut entry into Nikon's latest DSLR range is "Live" view technology. Selectable via a quick flick to 'Lv' mode on the mode dial, Nikon's implementation shows aperture changes and handles AF at the same time. The D300 has a new 51-point AF system with 15 cross type and 36 horizontal sensors that ensure fast and accurate focusing. To shoot moving subjects you can select from three dynamic focus AF Modes using groups of 9, 21, or all 51 focus points. The advantage of using all the 51 points is that it uses all the data from the AF points to provide accurate colour and light information, which helps Nikon's new Scene Recognition System to produce clear and sharp images. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, the D300 is fully compatible with Nikon's extensive range of DX-Format lenses - nice.

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