Hands-on D300 with ISO Test
November 26th, 2007
Today I had the opportunity to put my hands on the new Nikon D300. Our local photo store here in Leipzig, Germany had some Nikon reps along with two D300 and a AF-S 14-24 f/2.8. Sadly they had no D3.
I had about 15 minutes with the D300. I did not take many shots. All was inside the small store with bad light. As the 14-24 is nice — I don’t think it makes much sense on a D300. I wounder why they had this with them. As for the D300, the finder is really great. It is a clear step upwards from my D70s as is the LCD. It is huge. You have to take a step backwards to see it fully :-)
ISO Test
Scene Overview
This is a uncropped version of the whole scene. The ISO samples are 100% crop from the center. They are all shoot in RAW mode with the new AF-S 14-24 f/2.8 @ f/2.8 aperture priority on a tripod. I converted the RAW files in Lightroom 1.3 with standard settings, manual white balance and 35 sharpening. All where converted with the same settings. Here they are:
ISO 100
ISO 125
ISO 160
ISO 200
Unfortunately this one is a big shacky, because of my hand firing. There was no cable release available.
ISO 400
ISO 800
ISO 1600
ISO 2000
ISO 2500
ISO 3200
ISO 4000
ISO 5000
ISO 6400
Some last words: I think the test is in a pretty worst case scenario. The samples are taken in bad light and the crop is from a shadow area. I don’t know how good Lightroom/ACR handles noise at the D300 in comparison to Nikon Capture NX and if this will improve. Nor do I know for sure, if this was a final D300. But I don’t think they handed me a preproduction one.
Personally I find there is to much color noise. And to much noise at all. I hoped for a bit fewer noise. But lets wait for some good comparison noise test between the 40D, A700 and D300.
Update
You can find some good noise comparison between a D300, D2X, D3, 40D and 5D in a article of Hugo Rodríguez.
Ah, Alex, Glad to have found your blog. Interesting test, makes me feel less bad about not having a D300 too. Cheers.
Hello. I am searching some photography shops in Lepizig and I found your blog. One of my friend is in the area Lepizig-Gera and has a whole day for shopping in Leipzig. Could you please give me some adresses from photography shop(s)? I only found Kodak Fachgeschaft on hainstrasse 19 Innenstadt Leipzig, 04109. I want a flash for my Nikon D 80 (or even other accessories, if the prices are better than in Romania). Thank you :)
Hi Dan. The Kodak shop is not a reasonable place to buy camera stuff. They have only a quick photo service. You can go to:
Fotohaus Pinger
Schloßgasse 2-4
04109 Leipzig
It is in the very center of the city, near a shopping mall called Petersbogen and near Karstadt. They have all sorts of cameras and accessories. Its the shop I mentioned in this post.
Another possibility in the city center is Saturn in the main station. They have quite a bit of stuff more than Karstadt or Kaufhof.