The Professional's Choice: The Nikon D300

Released at almost the same time as the Canon EOS 40D, the initial MSRP of the Nikon D300 was five hundred bucks higher, a more than 35% jump. The difference was that Nikon had already sliced the DSLR marked more finely than Canon had. Where Nikon had three tiers of cameras (“entry”, “upper entry”, and “enthusiast”) beneath its D300, the EOS 40D had to satisfy everyone too cool to buy a Rebel but not well-heeled enough for a full-frame 5D.

The D300 was launched at the same time as the D3 pro camera and, while it didn’t have the full-frame sensor or built-in vertical grip, it used Nikon’s pro control layout and rugged, weather-resistant construction. It also replaced the 10MP CCD sensor of its D200 predecessor with a new 12MP CMOS sensor, backed with Nikon’s new EXPEED image processor.

When I say that it uses Nikon's "pro control layout", the photo above is what I'm referring to. The pro cameras from Nikon (and Canon and Olympus) don't have a mode dial, like on consumer/hobbyist-oriented cameras, where the PASM modes often share space with Portrait, Landscape, Sports, et cetera. Instead you select among Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Manual by holding a mode button and spinning a dial. Similarly, controls like ISO and White Balance tend to be located where they're easy to access on the fly without having to dive into a menu on the screen.

The top panel's LCD screen has all the data you'd need about the camera's settings viewable at a glance when you power it up.

The power switch is the same one Nikon's been using across their DSLR and MILC lines pretty much universally for yoinks now, unlike Canon, who seem to want to experiment with a new location for the switch every so often. Right next to it, easily reached by the shooter's index finger, are the Mode and Exposure Compensation buttons.

The pentaprism viewfinder is bright, contains all the shooting info you need, and has true 100% coverage, as opposed to its predecessor's 95% coverage finder. Where the D200 had a 2.5" screen on the back, the D300 has a 3" LCD with more than 3X the pixel count. The controls are laid out in typical Nikon fashion. The little rotating latch with the Pac-Man pictogram at lower right is the remote release for the memory card door. The D300 records to a single CF card slot.

It has an in-body focus motor, allowing it to make use of older Nikon autofocus glass as well as newer lenses. The only new F-mount glass is can't handle are the lenses with electromagnetically-controlled apertures.

The D300 was expensive, but it was pretty much the state of the art in APS-C cameras circa 2008. Unless you need to shoot video or simply must have live view, there's no reason you couldn't put it to work today.

Big Little Camera: The Olympus E-3

Olympus was unique among the big camera makers in that they had not pursued autofocus technology in their interchangeable lens single lens reflex cameras, and therefore when they designed their first digital SLR they were essentially starting from a clean sheet of paper.

Since they didn't have to accommodate an existing lens mount and its associated library of glass, they were free to use a physically smaller sensor, working with Eastman Kodak to create the Four Thirds System.

This allowed for small cameras and small lenses and this was hyped for their early consumer and enthusiast DSLRs, but which probably came back to bite them in the butt when the E-3 was launched in late 2007 because the E-3 is not a small camera.

The thing is, the E-3 wasn't intended to be small and light. It was intended to be a professional camera and the cues are everywhere, in features that you'd normally only find on its Nikon D3 or Canon EOS-1D Mark III contemporaries.

The body was magnesium alloy, rugged and weather sealed. Rather than a mode dial, you cycle through your PASM by holding a button and spinning a control wheel. The battery and memory card doors are secured by positive latches. There's a built-in mechanical shutter to cut off light from the eyepiece for long exposure low-light photography. About the only distinctively "pro" feature it lacked was the built-in vertical grip. Also, thanks to the smaller 10MP Live MOS Four Thirds sensor, it lacked the $4-5,000 price tag of its APS-H and Full Frame competitors, boasting an MSRP of only $1,699 at launch.

It had an articulated 2.5" LCD screen, unlike the competition because, also unlike the competition it could shoot in live view. It sported Olympus's IS in-body image stabilization, a maximum shutter speed of 1/8000th, and could shoot in burst mode at 5 frames per second.

Alas, despite the fact that equivalent lenses were much smaller than its larger-sensored competition, the idea of a pro Four Thirds DSLR just never really caught on.

A shame, because Zuiko glass is great and this thing takes nice pictures...

DSLR Pics: Puppers with the Olympus E-3

The Zuiko Digital ED 12–60mm 1:2.8–4 SWD was the kit lens originally packaged with the Olympus E-3 when it was new. With its 24-120mm equivalent focal length range and fast aperture, it's a good piece of glass and compact compared to equivalent APS-C and full-frame lenses.

DSLR Pics: Fair Folk with the Sony a700

My seventh day at the Indiana State Fair I brought the Sony a700. Of the three lenses I have available I decided to take the Sony 16-80mm f/3.5-4.5 Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T*, which is a nice high-quality general purpose zoom. 

It's not an ideal choice for me at the fair, as the 120mm equivalent maximum focal length is a little shorter than I prefer for those environs, but the 18-200 superzoom I have is too slow to focus and has too slow a maximum aperture at longer focal lengths for me to be entirely happy with it on the old Sony sensor. I was too afraid that I'd have to crank the ISO up past 1000 to get any good shots from the blacksmithing shed or in the Pioneer Village mercantile building.

I was pretty happy with the results. This lens focuses reasonably quickly and quietly and delivers pleasing images.

Maxxum Overdrive: The Sony a700

When Sony acquired Konica Minolta's camera business in 2006, the successor for the Maxxum 7D was already on the drawing board. It wound up being the second Sony-branded DSLR, since the Maxxum 5D successor had already been ready to launch and was simply re-badged as a Sony.

Whereas Konica Minolta had marketed their high-tech autofocus SLRs as "Maxxum" in the USA, "Dynax" in Europe, and "𝛼" (Alpha) in the home market, Sony went with the 𝛼 nomenclature everywhere. The Maxxum 5D replacement became the 𝛼100, while the new high-end camera was marketed as the 𝛼700. (Because I am too lazy to set up a macro, I'm just going to use a lower-case Latin "a" rather than the Greek "𝛼" from here on out.)

Unlike the earlier a100, which used an APS-C sized 10MP CCD sensor, the a700 sported an all-new 12MP Sony Exmor CMOS sensor backed by the latest version of Sony's Bionz image processor. 

Sony had a lot of experience in cameras already, both via their own popular Mavica and Cyber-shot lines of digital point-and-shoots, as well as being a major supplier of sensor chips to other makers. Additionally, they acquired a raft of tech from Konica Minolta.

The sensor featured Minolta's Anti-Shake in-body image stabilization, renamed "Super Steady-Shot" by Sony. It also inherited Minolta's Eye Start, which put a couple sensors under the eyepiece that would wake the camera and start focusing (depending on the setting) when raised to the photographer's eye. The a700 added a sensor in the front of the grip to ensure that the Eye Start sensors wouldn't mistake a tee shirt for a face when the camera was hanging on a strap.

The mode dial had the usual full-auto green rectangle, typical PASM settings, the user-configurable MR (for "Memory Recall"), and then the easy-mode Portrait, Landscape, Macro, Sports, etc. for novices.

Said novices would need to be fairly well-heeled, as the a700 sported an MSRP of $1400 (almost $2200 in current dollars), but gave you a bright pentaprism viewfinder and magnesium front and top body panels for your money.

Oddly, for such a gizmo-laden camera in this price range, there was no LCD status display up top. Instead, when powering up, the 3.0" rear LCD screen would display all the camera's current settings.

The rear panel was high-impact plastic and featured a 3" TFT display, as well as a joystick for moving sensor points and navigating menus and a sliding switch for enabling or defeating the Super Steady Shot picture.

Currently used bodies are running as low as under a c-note and the lenses can be had for a song, as the Alpha mount is essentially orphaned with Sony having discontinued their DSLR offerings.

It gives splendid results for a digital body nearing two decades old.

Semi-Tough: Canon EOS 40D

Of the high-end “prosumer” DSLR bodies that hit the market during 2007-2008, the Canon EOS 40D had the most aggressive pricing…by a whole dollar.

When it was released in late August of '07, Canon had yet to slice the DSLR market as finely as they did in later years. There were the 1D and 5D professional cameras, but lower on the totem pole there was only the plastic-bodied entry-level EOS Rebel XTi, and the 40D, successor to the earlier 30D.

This meant that the $1,299 Canon EOS 40D had to cater to every buyer from well-heeled novices who were too cool for a Rebel to advanced amateurs and professionals who couldn't justify the $3,000+ tariff demanded for the full-frame 5D.

This made for a mode dial that was a little... crowded.

You had your "Green Rectangle" setting, which turned the camera into a fully-automated giant point-'n'-shoot. For the advanced amateur or pro, there was your regular array of "PASM" modes (as well as "A-DEP", which adjusted the aperture to ensure that all subjects covered by the active focusing points were inside the depth of field), and the user-programmable C1-through-C3 custom settings. Finally, for beginners there was the selection of Sports, Portrait, Landscape, et cetera modes. All in all, this sums up to fifteen possible settings on the mode dial. Yikes!

The LCD panel on top gave you pretty much all the setting info you needed to drive the camera and could be backlit orange for easy reading in dim lighting.

The 40D was a pretty iterative update of the earlier 30D. On the back, the LCD was now a larger 3" screen, up from its predecessor's 2.5" unit, necessitating the relocation of of the buttons from a vertical column to the left of the screen to a horizontal row under it.

Under the hood, the APS-C sized CMOS sensor went from 8.2 to 10.1 megapixels and the 40D got Canon's new DIGIC III image processor, the second camera after the 1D to do so.

Despite being well-received and earning the "Highly Recommended" rating from DPReview, the 40D was one of the shortest-lived prosumer Canons, getting replaced after only a year by the 15MP EOS 50D.

Nowadays you can pick up used 40D bodies for a c-note or less, but they still work great.

Turn of the Screw

When Canon launched the EOS system with its new EF lens mount in 1987, it was a clean break with past tech. The "Electro Optical System" severed the mechanical linkages between the camera body and lens. The aperture was electro-mechanically actuated, and the focusing was handled by a motor in the lens body itself.

Similarly, when Olympus put out its first DSLR, the E-1, the Four Thirds system represented a clean break from its prior film SLR legacy. All the lenses were from a clean sheet of paper.

The other DSLR makers in the first decade of this millennium were attempting to bridge a gap to prior technology. Nikon, Pentax, and Minolta/Sony all offered cameras with focus motors in the camera body which operated the lens focus via a screw drive.

I was reminded of this yesterday when I had the Sony a700 out for a walk with the 18-200mm zoom lens on it.

I'd been hoping for birds or squirrels, but when I went to shoot some flowers close-up, the whirring as the focus motor spun the lens all the way to the other extreme seemed interminable...

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Great Deals Await!

So, for doing a comparison test for the blog... and also because I love playing with different cameras ...I got the Sony a700 and a Sony 16-50mm f/2.8 zoom lens from KEH for $290, combined.

That's a rugged, weather resistant, pro-grade camera and lens for under three bills. Roberts/Used Photo Pro, locally, had a 16-80mm F3.5-4.5 ZA Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* for a hundred bucks. It was in "Good" condition, basically the equivalent to BGN (bargain) at KEH because the rubber focusing and zoom rings were somewhat faded and there was visible wear on the lens barrel, but it's functionally just fine, and it's premium glass that sold for nearly a grand back when it came out.

Then the other day I saw that Roberts had an 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 zoom with caps and hood for $89.

That's a pro-grade APS-C DSLR body, and three zoom lenses, two of them rather high-end, all for less than the cost of the cheapest kit DSLR at Walmart.

DSLR Pics: Vintage Triumphs with the Canon EOS 40D

I was getting lunch at Fat Dan's the other day when a gaggle of Triumph motorcycles pulled up over at Yat's, so I ambled over for a closer look.

The 40D was wearing the excellent EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS zoom lens, which is probably the best glass Canon made for their crop-sensor DSLRs.

I'd been shooting moving cars and the camera was set to Program Mode with the ISO set to 200 despite the fact that it was a sunny day, in order to keep shutter speeds reasonably quick.

Between the good glass and the 10MP CMOS APS-C sensor, the photos are pretty reasonably detailed.

DSLR Photos: First pics from the new D300

KEH had a Nikon D300 in EXC condition for $79 and, rather than let my D300S substitute for one in my "Class of 2008 Prosumer Shootout", went ahead and sprang for it. It arrived the other day and I charged the battery, put a card in it, popped the excellent 17-55mm f/2.8G DX zoom lens on it, and took it out for a spin.

The 17-55/2.8 is a monster lens but really delivers great results. The 26-83mm equivalent focal length is good for most around-the-neighborhood shooting situations and the f/2.8 maximum aperture all the way out to the long end means it's a pretty fair short portrait lens in a pinch.

As Zed noted in an online discussion, at the time the D300 was definitely the big dog in this class of cameras, easily outselling its crop-sensor competition from Canon, Pentax, Olympus, and Sony.

For a camera that was released towards the end of 2007, it still holds up quite well. You could still do work with this thing, no problem.

The Sweet Spot DSLRs...

Back in the 2000s, when full-frame sensors and all the various tech that was packed into full-house pro bodies from Canon and Nikon made them eye-wateringly expensive, both manufacturers produced a line of cameras that used rugged and weather-sealed bodies combined with APS-C crop sensors and a slightly less-than cutting edge feature set.

They wound up getting called "prosumer" bodies, but cameras like the Nikon D200 or the Canon EOS 40D were as often as not used by professional photogs and serious amateurs who did photography as side gig and couldn't justify a $4,000-$5,000 pro body.

A Nikon D200 with battery grip mounted.

As sensor prices dropped and the full-frame craze spread, these cameras kind of lost their niche.

Starting with the EOS 60D, Canon's two-digit crop sensor cameras lost their metal body shells and weather sealing, with the pro-grade crop sensor torch getting passed to the then-new 7D, whose single-digit moniker made no bones about its target market.

Nikon let the D300S linger unchanged for years and actually abandoned the category for a while until the D500 debuted in 2016. 

I really like these on the used market because they're great values and built like tanks.

DSLR Pics: Indiana State Fair with the Nikon D3

These photos are from the 2021 Indiana State Fair Pioneer Village, using a Nikon D3 and the 24-120mm f/4 VR zoom lens, which is an excellent and versatile all-purpose walking-around lens.

Dating from 2007, the D3 is quite long in the tooth, but it was Nikon's top-of-the-line pro body until it was supplanted by the D3S in late 2009.

It's got all the features you'd expect from a pro DSLR: tank-like build quality, full weather sealing, dual CF card slots, and 9 frames per second burst mode.

You can click on all these photos to see them in their full 12MP glory.