A and N Photography: Initial sample images of the new Nikon D300

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Initial sample images collected from a production Nikon D300
November 11, 2007

Information

Here are some sample ISO capture images I was able to get from a production Nikon D300 at the San Diego Photo Expo. Nikon had some of their new announced toys there: D3, D300 and the 24-70mm. The goal of these image captures was not to show off artistic ability but rather the low noise capture ability of the D300. One of the biggest complaints about the Nikon DX camera format has been the "noisy" low ISO dark performance. Even though people have forgotten how grainy ISO 1600 images from film were, it is now expected that digital sensors can perform without noise up to amazingly high ISO settings.

The D300 felt as good as my trusty D200 and balances well enough with the 24-70mm lens attached. The D300 buttons are a bit different than the D200 and the button positions have changed, but all the critical ISO, Quality and White Balance settings are right on top of the camera, where they should be. With only a few minutes with the camera, one can't expect exciting images from a trade show, but these will give the reader a taste of the noise and image quality performance of the D300.

The below images are JPGs taken directly out of the Nikon D300. As tempting as it is to correct out the color and other factors of the camera, you can see what is deposited right on the CF card. If you wish to download full images for yourself, right-click and select "Save target as..." on each of the labeled sample images or text description. You can then look at the full D300 4288x2848 Fine JPG images and examine them for yourself. Do not judge the image quality from the thumbnails below, as I only resized the images and made no color correction, sharpening or otherwise. Whatever the camera settings were is what is here.

ISO -1.0, 1/4 second, f2.8	ISO 200, 1/8 second, f2.8
ISO 400, 1/30 second, f2.8	ISO 800, 1/40 second, f3.2
ISO 1600, 1/100 second, f5	ISO 3200, 1/60 second, f4

Conclusion

The D300 performs better in focus speed and in noise performance. The high ISO performance does far better than the D200 and I'm confident other factors are better than the D200. Given the dramatic improvements in each Nikon product introduced, I expect that the D300 will do very well.

Read the D3 first image sample report.

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