I picked up a Nikon D300 today, and it is an incredibly sexy beast of a camera. Right now [when I had started typing this originally, took about an hour and a bit to charge, just looked over as I was about to hit post and saw that it is done charging], waiting for batteries to charge, but probably won't be awake long enough to play much with it tonight. Have tomorrow to get used to controls being positioned slightly differently than on the D70 before a new semester of techniques class starts on Monday.
Am very, very happy though for the Live preview function -- while it is something that seems incredibly logical and common-sense to have, prior to this and the D3 body, Nikon didn't have a pro/semi-pro body with live preview on the LCD. I think the last camera with a live preview, RAW files, in an SLR-style body was pretty much the Coolpix 5700, which I missed dearly in the last year.
Reason that it makes me happy is that with the problems I've had with back pain in past year, coupled with my eyesight gradually getting weaker than what it was, crouching over a camera in the studio [I'm 5'11" tall, and generally for a 'correct' portrait, the center of the lens' axis is the same height as the center axis of eyes of the subject] to squint into a viewfinder I can barely see in order to ensure that the composition of my images is bang-on has been murder. From playing briefly with the camera in the store, the display seems to have decent tonality when viewed from an angle as well as straight on [meaning that it seems I might be able to just glance down at it and have a sense of the tones in my image -- rather than some screens that you end up with stuff looking funky if you are not looking at it straight on] -- although I will see after shooting with it for a while, as to whether I hook it up to a larger screen in the studio [as this body allows what would be visible through Live preview on the LCD to be displayed on a TV/projector/whatever - something that in other bodies, was not possible to see what was in viewfinder except through the viewfinder itself -- image shot would be displayed on the LCD or hooked up TV]
 amalyn · Sun Jan 06, 2008 @ 04:07am · 0 Comments |
