Who has pre ordered a d300 or d3

[badpickev]

no, there is always some clown that has to hand hold long lenses. usually its me

[Tom Swaman]

Badpickev,

I hear that if you wait for the next generation, the lens will include a "hand-hold" switch and a bag of cotton candy for clowns.

Tom

[db8267]

Yes put me down as one of many that hopes to have a Merry 300 Christmas!!!!

[davew]

A few "" from his in depth pre production look


e-Photographia.com

"But when it comes to high ISO performance, the Nikon D3 is a real champ. Even at ISO 1600, the advantage compared to D2Xs and D300 is marked. The D2Xs has incredibly strong noise reduction, which obliterates fine detail. The D300 is less heavy handed in this regard, but still, detail is lacking."

"Another thing I noticed: The preproduction Nikon D300 was underexposing by about 0.5 stops compared to the D200 and the D3. Either the metering is off or the sensor is less sensitive."

"Nikon LiveView This seems to be the start of a new Nikon era - they're including new features. Is this a useful feature or just a gadget? Well, judge for yourself. It does come in handy when taking pictures from above the head, as long as you can see the display, of course. In a dark mine, it came in very handy as a sort of night vision device, too – the sensor is more sensitive than the eye, so it brought out details that would have been invisible otherwise.
On the other hand, I don't really like the way Live View is activated. In Canon cameras, you only need to set the Set button behaviour once. After that, all you need to do is press the Set button and voila, Live View is activated. Nikon, on the other hand, requires you to switch to Lv mode using the drive mode dial. In underwater photography, this might well prove impossible. The whole procedure is a bit more awkward than Canon’s procedure, making it more difficult to quickly switch between LiveView and normal shooting. Still, I don't think this is something that would actually cause anyone not to buy the D3 or the D300 - it's more of a rough edge than an actual design fault.
However, there's one clear advantage – Nikon D3 can autofocus even with the mirror up, unlike Canons and the D300. While this is very much slower than normal focusing, it can still come in handy, especially for slow or still subjects. (Your humble translator would have gladly given his hypothetical firstborn for this feature a few weeks ago - there I was at the most astonishingly gorgeous piano performance, and I couldn't take a picture for the life of me because the SSCHHHHHCLUNK of my Canon was way too loud.)"



"Again, and I don't tire of repeating this, these are preproduction cameras. Still, I saw enough to come to this conclusion: If you're a working pro who uses Nikon, get in the line. The D3 is almost blasphemously good. If you're using a D200 and want to upgrade to the D300, well, you might want to wait for the production camera, see how it does, and then decide. While the D300 is a marked improvement, it might not be worth the money you'll lose by selling the D200 and buying the D300. On the other hand, if you're using the D200 to earn money, go for the D300."


"The Nikon D300 is a bit of a mixed bag, though. I'll wait for the final firmware tweaks before passing any judgement on it. If you're a hobbyist, it might not be worth upgrading. If you're a pro, it's likely to be a good investment. Also, if you’re thinking about switching from D40x or D80 to a higher end camera, this might be just the ticket."

[Nikonfreak]

As with any and all reviews by anyone out there, always look at them (Positive or Negative) with a grain of salt. You don't know how much someone did or didn't go into the menus to tweak their image quality to make sure they got the most out of the camera that the box can produce.

If someone isn't a "brand X" shooter, they might not know the ins and outs and tricks of the brand to squeeze the most out of the feature set. Someone who's shot a brand extensively will have that kind of knowledge.

These things are what make reviews from folks like Thom Hogan valuable.

Julio