The most wonderful woman in the world and I have been celebrating our thirtieth (30th) year of marital bliss. We decided to make it a year-long event, and our bank accounts make it clear that we succeeded. One of the gifts I received came to me in July, very near our actual anniversary date. My wonderful wife gave me a camera upgrade!
Having shot nearly 20,000 images on my D50, I was absolutely elated when she told me to go get a shiny new D300. I added a few accessories like the MB-D10 vertical grip, and a few high-speed CF cards and began shooting as soon as I had some juice in the batteries.
After the initial fun of trying all the buttons and features, such as Live-View, and setting the camera up by going through all the menus and selecting initial settings was over, I was very concerned that I might have wasted our money.
I couldn’t enjoy the new ability to shoot at ISO 800 with no perceptible noise. I didn’t benefit from the blazing nine-frames-per-second frame rate. The wonderful high-resolution three-inch LCD on the back of the camera simply mocked me. You see, the first 400 or so images I shot on the D300 were absolutely terrible! I felt like I knew nothing about photography whatsoever.
I was desperate, so I decided to buy Thom Hogan’s Complete Guide to the Nikon D300. I read all 760-some-odd pages in two days. Thom is the guy to read if you shoot Nikon. He wrote that the D300 uses a different approach to balancing shutter speed, aperture, and ISO than the consumer cameras like the D50 when shot in Programmed Automatic (P) mode.
When shooting the D50, I had come to expect that the camera would change the aperture and ISO before adjusting the shutter speed. This meant that shutter speed was preferred over these settings in P mode. The D300 doesn’t work like that at all. It assumes that you know what effect you are looking for in your photo and that therefore aperture should be preferred to preserve depth-of-field if at all possible. Consequently, the D300 was preferring to shoot at much slower shutter speeds than my D50 would given the same light. This resulted in most of my pictures falling victim to camera shake–I can’t hand-hold well at all.
So, a word to the wise. Before you step up to a professional ( or “pro-sumer”) camera, be sure you are ready to shoot like a pro. It took me a long time to learn to really prepare for a photograph before releasing the shutter. I’ve learned to check the camera settings much more regularly than I ever did with the more forgiving D50.
Finally, I am making better images with the D300. The pain was worth it because it made me a better photographer.
I agree, Gary. I just had a series of shots where that was crucial this afternoon.
My results with quality rechargeable AAs in the MB-D10 grip is not such a clear-cut success as yours. The first time or two I did this, I got incredible life, just as you indicate, but ever since, I get 150-200 shots in and the camera is switching to the internal battery and telling me the AAs are drained. Maybe I have a bad cell, but I have tried an inordinate number of different batteries.
I am almost ready to buy the eN-EL4 with it’s special charger for the crazy amount Nikon wants for it and call it a deal.
Hi Larry,
One other trick to using the D300 at high ISO settings is to be aware of how the metering system is going to be assessing the available dark. If you stay with the default metering mode (matrix) it may not take into account the fact that the situation that you’re shooting may be one with extreme contrasts contained within it.
This is especially true when you’re shooting, for instance, musicians on a stage. The musos will be brightly lit, but surrounded by large patches of blackness. The camera may want to average the scene, which is probably the last thing that you want to happen. Rather, switch to spot metering, meter on the subject’s face (or wherever) and shoot. Chimp, adjust exposure, reshoot, and then you should be somewhere close to the correct exposure.
For the MB-D10 – if you’re not already aware of this – fill it with good, rechargeable AAs, and look forward to about 2000 shots between battery recharges.
Thanks for dropping by John. It’s always a pleasure to hear from you. The D300 has definitely made me a better shooter. It has also made me able to see the weakness in my existing lenses.
Marriage is a wonderful thing, as you know, and unless a couple decides to commit to it long term, they will never know the kind of love my wife and I have found. It simply isn’t possible without long experience together through thick and thin… especially thin.
Sorry it took so long to read this article… I’ve been preoccupied lately with things unrelated to photography. I’ll hopefully have a blog entry about it in a couple weeks.
I liked reading this post. It kind of highlights why I shoot in Aperture priority and in RAW. I set out from the beginning, after reading “Complete Digital Photography” before having a camera, to shoot in manual or semi-manual mode. I need to spend more time learning about correct exposure and when to use proper exposure compensation or what to base my exposure off of.
I’m glad to hear your D300 is pushing you to learn. It’s nice to have something to give you that push. Perhaps when I upgrade to the Canon 5D Mark II, it’ll be the push I need to move ahead.
And congratulations on your 30 years of marriage! I am seeing so many people who have made it beyond 10 years. It’s blessing me because I care about marriage and love my wife. The casual attitude toward marriage and divorce these days saddens me. Keep up the great work!