The landscape of the mid-range D-SLRs has been taking form over the last six months, with a slew of new releases from the likes of Canon, Olympus and Sony. However, one big player was missing; Nikon's D300. Well finally it has arrived, and we can tell you it has been worth the wait.
Sitting at a price point slightly higher than most of its competitors, this most definitely isn't a happy snap camera. It boasts a 12.1-megapixel sensor, six-frame per second shooting and a massive 51 auto-focus points, indicating it is clearly targeted at professionals and amateurs with a wad of cash burning a hole in their pocket.
We tested using a 24-85mm lens which differs a little from the default kit lens, so keep that in mind. As you'd expect the image quality is nothing short of stunning. With a higher sensor resolution than its chief rival, Canon's EOS 40D, it captures incredible amounts of detail. As with previous Nikon SLRs, the D300's images tend to be slightly towards the soft side, but that isn't to say they lack clarity. We captured some of the smoothest most detailed outdoor shots we've ever seen using this camera. If you'd prefer a slightly sharper look of course that can easily be achieved by adjusting a few settings.
Chromatic aberration wasn't really a problem either, with no loss of clarity towards the edges of the frame. There was some minor haloing in high contrast areas but it won't be problematic at most print sizes.
Colours were generally bright and vivid, with strongly saturated reds and blues. Overall accuracy was impressive. We would probably give the edge to the 40D in this regard, but with the multitude of pre- and post-processing options available to photographers these days the difference is negligible.
Andrew Kliem
more : pcworld
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