Nikon D300 Review
Here we have one of Nikon's mid range cameras. Called the D300, it sits in the range between the D90 consumer camera & the D700/D3 pro cameras. The camera has an APS sized, 12 megapixel CMOS sensor leading to high quality and high resolution photos.
So on the front there's buttons for changing the lens and a function button programmable to just about anything you want. On the back theres a beautiful 3 inch display which now supports live view, meaning you no longer have to look through the viewfinder. There is however, some noticeable lag in this view, but it's useful for things like panning where having your face in the way can somewhat hinder the movement. Also on the back theres playback buttons, a navigation pad and various other menu buttons.
It has a reassuringly weighty feel to it that comes from the dustproof & waterproof magnesium chassis. It feels very well balanced in your hand, especially with a Speedlight on top (it supports any Speedlight, not just the newest i-TTL ones); not too heavy (at 825g body only) but definitely not too light. The body itself is 14.7 x 11.4 x 7.4cm, so isn't a huge body, and will fit very comfortably in your hand.
One advantage it has over the D90 is the fact that old lenses can be metered with it, meaning there's no need to throw out all those lovely old AI/AI-S F-Mounts; the only problem you will get is that, as the sensor is not as big as a 35mm one, the lens will effectively be cropped by 1.5x, so a 50mm 
lens will effectively become a 75mm. As it has an inbuilt autofocus motor, you can autofocus on any AF lens, instead of having to rely on AF-S lenses as required by the D3000/D60-esque cameras.
Next to the lens, there's a small switch which goes from M (Manual Focus), to S (Single Focus) and C 
(Continuous Focus). When turned to S, the camera will not change it's focus point, whereas under C it will try and keep the most important (it thinks) object in focus, making it very useful for sports where you can have something moving towards you yet you still want it in focus.
The camera also has correction to get rid of those dreaded chromatic aberrations, and it most definitely works! Where once you may have a bright sliver of cyan you now get a lovely crisp edge and great colour representation. The D300 packs something called Active D-Lighting, which can make somewhat average photos look bright & vibrant, and it's quite a revelation!
Unlike most of it's Nikon siblings, when put on AF, the viewfinder is totally clear with no kind of etched in markings, which makes a nice change and makes composing photos much easier. It still shows important information along the bottom so you don't need to take your face away, and the information is also relayed to the small monochrome screen on top (which can be illuminated, making it usable in the dark).
The image quality is absolutely stunning, for example, the photo of the F1 Car was taken with an old Manual focus Tamron 80-210mm lens that I got free with an old film SLR, and yet the result still looks pretty stunning, showing that the D300 can bring the best out of just about anything. It's a similar case with the church photo, you can see every single lichen on the surface of the stone, without even a hint of aberrations!
One of the few things missing is the ability to take video. This is a function available on the D90, but is still not quite there due to the lack of autofocusing, the slightly strange wobbly appearance and the lack of additional microphone mean it's still better to get a separate video camera than cluttering up your lovely DSLR with something that's not very useful.
The D300 uses EN-EL3e batteries, which I have managed to use for over 2000 photos
, so you really won't need to charge it often, and almost certainly won't need a spare battery.
The D300 uses CompactFlash cards to store photos on, which has a speed advantage over SD cards, meaning the D300 can take full advantage of it's 5fps mode. However, they are more expensive and less well supported than the more ubiquitous SD card. Personally, I use an 8GB SanDisk Ultra card that I got from Amazon for £20
On the side we a multitude of outputs in the form of mini USB (connecting to a PC) and both composite and HDMI outputs for connecting the camera to a TV.
The D300 does have a few problems. To change anything apart from ISO, quality, white balance, aparture or shutter speed you have to delve into a rather nasty maze of random menus. This can somewhat slow down a lot of photos you may want to take, but I guess they could hardly put a button on the camera for every single function the D300 has.
However, this does come at a price. And it's quite a big one. The camera that superseded it, the D300S (which basically just adds video), is available from Amazon for £1150
at the time of writing. If you aren't bothered about video, you can get a D300 for around £800 from eBay, around the same price as a D90, which seems like an absolute steal to me!
Overall, this is a pretty stunning camera. It has the portability and size of a consumer DSLR, whilst still having the features and producing the results of a professional DSLR. It must be the best camera in its price range at the moment, and I honestly can't think of much that Nikon could do to make it better.
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