Yesterday I bought a Nikon D300 with the Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens for a rather hefty €2000. Being a bit overwhelmed by the plethora of settings available on it I decided the best thing to do was head out and take some shots with the camera in its default settings. This was just to see how it shoots. I wanted to create some High Dynamic Range pictures so I looked a little into the D300’s auto-bracketing features. Equipped with my new knowledge I headed out this morning at 7am (It was freezing and still pitch dark) to wander around my campus grounds. Below is the one shot I took - five exposures using the D300’s interval timer functions. For this shot I left absolutely everything the way it way when I took it out of the box - I didn’t set any aperture, shutter speed, manual focus, white balance, I didn’t check any histogram, I just wanted to see what the camera would do on the fly. I also left the lens to swirl about and choose its own focal length. I’m currently at a loss as to how the lens aperture is set; the body aperture setting ranges from F3.5 to F22 but the lens is only for F3.5 - F5.6 so I’m not sure what’s going on there yet. Maybe setting the aperture on the body will set the lens aperture also?
Click on image for 1200×797 pixel resolution
I’m pretty happy the way this photo came out - it was very dark when I took these exposures yet the tone mapping is applied quite evenly. I had set the camera to take 14bit uncompressed NEF files, I’ll be experimenting with 12bit uncompressed and 12bit lossless compressed etc to see what difference each one gives. If you want to buy a camera I suggest right now that the D300 should be top of your list!
If you enjoyed this post, don't keep it from others, please SHARE below!
7 Responses
UCD Library In The Morning by projectVISUAL.NET
October 22nd, 2008 at 3:56 pm
1[...] took a metered shot along with two under- and two overexposed shots (±2EV). Like my first post on using the D300, I did nothing to optimise the settings (excepts setting aperture priority). I’m slowly [...]
Bob
October 24th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
2Wow, nice camera, nice shot, I got a Canon D40, use it mostly for nightime astrophotography
Stephen
October 25th, 2008 at 2:43 am
3Hi Bob, it is a great camera, it feels very solids and is loaded with features. I never tried the Canon D40 but looking from your site it seems like a great camera also.
Bikes Drowned In Leaves by projectVISUAL.NET
October 28th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
4[...] Very First Impressions of the Nikon D300 First Nikon D300 Image UCD Library In The Morning Blue Sky [...]
Tree Battered By Nature by projectVISUAL.NET
November 12th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
5[...] Very First Impressions of the Nikon D300 First Nikon D300 Image UCD Library In The Morning Blue Sky [...]
Pamelala
December 25th, 2008 at 1:40 am
6I love my D300, one of the first images I took was of a colourful sign and I was saying to myself WOW that is SOOC! It’s a great camera. I mostly use my ‘nifty 50′!
Pam
Stephen
December 25th, 2008 at 11:32 am
7Hi Pam! The D300 is great, although I was just over at Stuck In Customs and there’s a christmas picture taken with the D3X and is amazing - I’m a tiny bit jealous of it. Nice site btw - very flashy (see what I did there? :))
RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI
Did todays picture make you think? Share the thought with others as a comment!
Recent Posts
Categories
Blogroll
Calender
MORE OF ME
MY TWITPIC
MY FLICKR
MY FACEBOOK
Blog Of The Day
Postings
Tags
360 degree Apple buttons Christmas chromatic aberrations colour fringing Corfu croagh patrick D300 Dublin exposure blending first post Flash gimp HDR HDR Max High Speed Videos hiking images ireland Lightroom long exposure mask layer money mountain movie clip Nature nighttime Nikon panoramic Photomatix photos Photoshop rapidweaver resizing Selling sky sponge tool surreal tone mapping Travels unrealistic vectorising vienna wordpressProjectVISUAL is proudly powered by WordPress - BloggingPro theme by: Design Disease