One of those effects of those weeks of spreadsheet-peering is that I’ve become intimately familiar with pricing of camera systems, lenses and accessories. It’s funny too, because currently right now, the local camera body prices for the Canon 40D and Nikon D300 are about on par with prices at say Amazon.com – but lenses and accessories are dreadfully more expensive. If you’re following my train of thought right now, you’d also conclude then that buying the latter from online retailers would be a great idea – but as it is, these retailers won’t ship to Singapore. Boo!
Still, Matt – our best bud up in Missouri – will be flying to Singapore next month to visit and staying with us for several weeks. Would you believe it – someone who’s flying quite literally halfway round the world and paying a few thousand moola just to eat Roti Prata at Jalan Kayu, and especially when I think Jalan Kayu roti prata is so overrated. Anyway, I’ve asked him to tompang a few lenses and accessories; so orders were made at Amazon.com and I’ll be having the items shipped to his home address prior to his departure.
As for the camera itself, wow – the size of the 421 page manual says it all. There’s a learning curve and more customization tweaks and options than you can shake a tree with. While exposure, metering and focusing techniques remain familiar, button layouts took a while to get used to. This was only my second Nikon SLR, and things have completely changed since my old FG-20 23 years ago.
Not only that, I’m going to miss a few other things. Firstly, there’re no scene modes. I’m guessing that Nikon believes that anyone who buys a D300 had better learn how to create their own custom settings for the scenes they’re shooting. But while there’re banks to save your customized options into, it’d still be nice to have a landscape or a dusk scene on a mode dial somewhere for ah peks like me.
Secondly, a couple of times I was wondering in the initial test shots eh how come the shot is so super underexposed when I realized that “Programmed Auto” in the D300 isn’t meant to be taken literally. You could have the mode set right there but because of some other esoteric option you’ve changed in one of the gazillion menus, the shot you’ve taken now is of incorrect exposure. And lastly, one of the very nice things the KM-5D had was to automatically create new folders based on date. That was a really nifty feature that allowed one to sort photographs easily when transferring back to the PC. That must had been a Konica-Minolta innovation because there’s no equivalent option in the D300 (or maybe I just haven’t figured out where it is yet).
All that said, Ling’s at least impressed with the shutter release sound that goes like a muffled “ker-(p l o c k)” instead of the very loud “KER PLAK” in the KM-5D. She said it sounds a lot more “pro” haha. Another difficulty I had with the old DSLR was how tough it was to determine if pictures were in focus during playback zoom. The higher resolution LCD in the D300, one of the much touted advantages over the 40D, is thus a godsend. Zoomed all the way in, one could easily see if pictures had been taken in focus, and I, all of Ling’s zits haha. She ran right into the bathroom to scrub her face after I showed her the above test shot.:) There’s even a very useful option that displays during playback the focusing points used for a picture.
So, all said and done, as painful as the purchase outlay was, I certainly have no regrets picking this. I imagine I would had been quite satisfied with the 40D too with the substantially lower as
I really love that camera. Admittedly a good photo is not due to the type of camera, but how good one is at using it, but nonetheless, I know that I would definitely produce better photos if I used one.