Nikon D300

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By Lori Grunin
Feb 04, 2008

When you build the follow-up to a hot camera, how do you turn up the heat? When Nikon shipped the D200 a couple of years ago, its combination of speed and photo quality blew away the limited competition, and provided a powerful, relatively inexpensive alternative to Nikon's then top-of-the-line D2X. The D300 faces a far more crowded field. Not only does it take on its venerable and now lower-priced predecessor, but also a cluster of far-from-shabby dSLRs just at or below its price: The Canon EOS 40D, the Sony Alpha DSLR-A700, the Olympus E-3, and the Pentax K20D.

Editors' note:

This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com. As such, please note that there may be slight differences in the testing procedure and ratings system. For more information on the actual tests conducted on the product, please inquire directly at the site where the article was originally published. References made to some of other products in this review may not be available or applicable in Asia. Please check directly with your local distributor for details.

Design

Nikon's offering a body-only box of the D300 as well as two kits: One with a DX 18mm-135mm F3.5-5.6G ED AF lens (27mm-202.5mm equivalent with the camera's 1.5x crop factor) and one with a DX 18-200mm F3.5-5.6G ED VR lens (27mm-300mm equivalent). We tested the latter kit, and also used the camera with two non-DX lenses: A preproduction version of the 14-24mm 2.8G ED and the 24-70mm F2.8G ED IF.

For the most part, Nikon sticks with the tried-and-true body design and interface of the D200, with its intelligently laid out controls. The dust- and weatherproof body weighs a hair over 825g, and feels as solid as a little tank. The viewfinder is bigger and brighter, with 100 percent coverage. There are a few behaviors we're not fond of, like the hard-to-manipulate metering dial and occasionally problematic AF-mode navigation (discussed below), but find the camera's operation comfortable and fluid. Nikon carries over the ultraflexible user-settings menus, which consists of two banks--shooting settings and custom settings--with four nameable slots each.

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