On Thursday evening my tax return was waiting for me when I got home from work, 3 hours later I was the proud owner of a new Nikon D300 digital SLR. What a learning curve. Upgrading from the Nikon D50 to the D300 was quite a jump but I was not willing to buy the old tech D80 or wait for it’s replacement which I expected to be released when they released the D60.
The D300 has a manual over 400 pages long and you need to read and understand most of it before you can expect to get the most out of the camera.
The auto focus system is quite a jump from the D50 and from my reading is still a jump from the D200. It includes a 51 point autofocus system where you can choose between single point, 9 point, 21 point or 51 point focus. There is also an option to turn on 3D 51 point auto tracking for moving subjects.
I am concentrating on learning the focus system first and will work on the different color modes and other features next.
I spent this morning out at the Reifel Bird Sanctuary in Delta, BC and had a good morning playing around with the D300 and the 70-300 VR lens.
One feature I like but you have to be careful about is the auto ISO. You can specify a maximum ISO speed and a minimum shutter speed and the camera will default to ISO 200 and only raise the ISO if the speed needed would drop below your preset value.
For example I set the Auto ISO settings to a max of ISO 1600 and A min of 1/250 of a second. Not really sure how it will work as the day I was out was nice and sunny and didn’t need to use this feature.
I will post some photo’s from the bird sanctuary. There will be no editing done to the photo’s other than a resize.