Hello, my name is Connor Clemen and this is going to be a thorough review on a Nikon D300 camera which just came out a few weeks ago. Now I’ve had this camera for a few weeks now and I had a lot of time to play with it. Now, what I’m going to be doing in this review is I’m going over the basically the new features and controls that the D80 has over the D200 and other cameras. And I’m going to be explaining basically what I think about those cam, what I think about those features, basically my opinion about the camera itself. Now the first thing that we’re gonna look at is its size and its built, quality and some of its controls, where they’re located. Now when you look at this side by side, and this is the Nikon D300, this is a Nikon D80, you can definitely see a very considerable size difference. The D80 is much, much smaller than the D300. I was actually surprised at how large the D300 was when it came. And if I turn around at the back you will also see another huge size difference back there. You can see how much bigger the back of the D300 is. And when I put it up like this, you can see that the top is a lot longer too. Now in terms of built quality however, the D300 of course wins hands down against like the D80 for instance. But when compared to the D200, they have the same built quality level. The D300 might be a little more rugged though. It’s been tested for shutter cycle of 150,000 shots which is 50,000 more shots than a D200 was. So it’s definitely more durable. It will probably last a little longer. Now if you compare the built quality to D80, the built quality of D300 is pure magnesium, alloy in the inside with rubber gaskets all over the buttons. So this thing is definitely water proof and dust proof as well. Unlike the D80 which can get dusted pretty easily. I am very happy with the built quality of the D300. In fact, I love it a ton. It’s such a great upgrade from the D80 in terms of built quality. If you work outside a lot or if you’re in dust and rain moisture a lot, you will really respect the D300’s great built quality. I definitely know that I have. When we speak about dust a little bit, you think about dust getting on the sensor and stuff. Like when you take off lenses, for instance on a D80, you can get dust on the sensor pretty easily. However, with the D300, it has what’s called a self-cleaning sensor unit on the inside of the body. And basically what it does is it vibrates and gets the dust off the sensor automatically. Well not automatically but you know, without having to take a blower and remove it yourself. Now that’s what’s basically useful about this and I have used it a couple times and I’ve seen no problems with it. However, I have read from some people that say it doesn’t really work all that well. Now, I can't say for sure because I personally have not gotten any dust whatsoever in my D300. I’m trying my best to keep dust out of the sensor even if it does have a cleaning sensor unit. So whether or not this cleaning sensor works really well in the D300, I’m not quite sure. Now when we look at the body of the D300, you will notice that it’s actually pretty much the same as the D200 body. Controls are in the same spots. The style is pretty much the same. The only real difference is this little thing up here in front. Now when we look at the buttons on the D300, you’ll notice it’s quite large especially when you compare on to the D80 over here. Now the usefulness of the buttons being so much larger is that when you’re wearing gloves outside in the cold, the bigger buttons make it easier for them to be pressed. Now I’m gonna go on with the inside of body. And inside this body of the D300 is the Xspeed image processing engine. Apparently, it’s the original concept of Nikon’s on image processor. And what it does is basically gives this camera 6 frames per second, 14 bit image processing, and quicker image processing as well. Now first I’m gonna start off with the frame ring. And what I’m going to do with the frame ring is compare the frame rates of the D80, the D200, and the D300. So you can hear the differences between them. I’m gonna start out with 3 frames per second on the D300 which is the same speed as the D80. That’s what you’re gonna get with 3 frames per second which is not all that fast. Next we’re gonna go to the D200 speed. Now you can hear that that is definitely quite faster than 3 frames per second. And now finally the D300 speed. That sounds actually quite a bit faster than I have would have expected from 5 to 6 frames per second. So as you can hear just from frame rates, the D300 definitely sounds a lot faster than the D200’s 5 frames per second. It even sounds a little faster than 6 frames per second. And if you compare this actually to the D, to the Canon 40D model, the Canon 40D and the D300 should just about the same speed eventhough Canon does claim that shoots 6.5 frames per second. The Canon does not quite shoot that fast at all. It shoots like 6.3 frames per second and the Nikon shoots even a little over 6 frames per second most times. Next thing that we’re gonna go on to in the Xspeed image processing is the 14 bit processing on the inside of this camera. Now the 14 bit processing is used in raw mode. And normally raw mode has been uses 12 bit processing but now Nikon offers 14 bit processing. Now I’ve looked at these two images closely together and you’ll see that the 14 bit image processing image is slightly better. It has better tone, better grain. It has a better co, a little bit better color as well. But there’s definitely not that much of a difference is definitely not something I would wanna use all that much basically because it takes up so much space on memory cards. It’s a lot larger file than just a normal raw 12 bit, almost twice as large. Next thing that we’ll gonna go on to is the D300’s autofocus system which has a whopping 51 autofocus points which is a huge amount. It’s the exact same autofocus system that is found in a new professional D3 which great. No other normal consumer priced digital SLR like the D300 has a professional type autofocus system in the body. The D300 is the only one like that. Now when we compared this to like the autofocus system of the D80 or the D200, you don’t see a huge amount of difference in speed necessarily which is shocking to some people. The D200 and the D80 have the same autofocus system and focus pretty much as fast as the D300. The D300 however does have a slight edge in darker areas. It does go much faster than those two cameras. But what I’m really pleased about with the autofocus systems of the D300 is its accuracy and precision. If I’m shooting with my D80 right here, I definitely see sometimes softer images from bad focusing or whatever. However, everything I’ve shot with the D300 has been sharp as a tack. I’ve compared shots in the exact same spot with the D80 and the D300 and you’ll see most of the time the D300 has slightly sharper images due to better focusing. So it’s definitely a good sign. Another thing that the focusing of the D300 offers is 3D tracking focusing. Now I’ve played around with this a little bit especially with a faster moving objects and I’m pleased to say that this actually works rather well. Now the only time it really doesn’t work that much is if you, the thing you’re focusing on is very small in the frame. It need to fill up at least, you know, a fourth of the center of the frame to work properly. And if it does do that, it works really well no matter how fast your object is moving. Further out however, more like it’s an eighth of a frame area, it won't track as well. So you wanna be careful with that. You really only wanna use 3D tracking if you’re pretty close to the subject. While we’re talking about autofocus system, the D300 also offers a special feature that no Nikon has offered it before till now. And that is AF Fine Tuning. Now, I’ve used this a little bit and I’ve surprisingly found that it works really, really well. When I first thought about it, I thought, you know, my Nikon 18 to 200 millimeter lens and 12 to 20 millimeter lens are pretty recent lenses. Probably don’t need much fine tuning. However, when I started shooting them and testing out the different areas on an AF Fine Focus Tuning, I noticed that the D, 18 to 200 millimeter and the 12 to 24 millimeter needed a little bit of fine focusing. Now you’re gonna find this Autofocus Fine Tuning in this setup menu here and it’s all the way down at the bottom, right there. When you go to it, you’re gonna find that it has the value for my 18 to 200 millimeter saved here. There it is right there and it’s number one as you can see. Now when we go back, you can actually see that the Saved Value in on +1. Now to setup this thing in to fine tune your lenses, you actually need to go in the Default and go up and down the list and take several pictures ranging from about negative 3 all the way up to positive 3. That’s how I did it in other words. And it worked just fine for me. Alright, now when I compare images, for instance, with the lens on the D80 and the same lens on the D300, now when I compare them, the images on the D300 are definitely much, much sharper because of the great focusing that I can get with its great autofocus and the AF Fine Tuning system.