The Nikon D300 is the amatuers professional camera.
As an amatuer photographer let me just say that this is a brilliant camera and I feel like a pro every time I shoot with it.
For the past 4 years I’ve been using Nikon’s predecessor, the D200. It’s an excellent camera and will provide a good comparison to the D300.
First and foremost the D300 produces amazing image quality.Compared with the D200 the highlights, shadows and colours are all much better. The sensor has increased to 12M pixels and the auto focus system boasts an awesome 51 points compared with the D200s 11.
The D300 body is constructed of Magnesium alloy which makes it very tough.It amasses an impressive 825 grams. Add a decent lens and you’ve over 1kg.It sounds heavy but it’s not that bad.My daily D300 lens is the Nikkor 18-200mm VRand even my wife will shoot all day without any issue.
The Nikon D300 battery lasts 3 times longer that the D200, even though the battery is exactly the same. I don’t know how Nikon do it but it’s a great improvement.
The other notable change is the LCD monitor is now 3″ compared with the Nikon D200s 2.5″. Ironically you would think that this would diminish battery life. Playback and menu browsing are significantly faster.
The only annoying thing I’ve discovered is that the continous advance shooting mode does not work with the built-in flash. This means that when you’re shooting in continous mode (Ch or Cl) and using the built-in flash the D300 will only produce one shot. If you use a speedlight then this is not a problem.
The Nikon D300 is presently $1800 on Amazon. Please note that this is for the D300 body only.
The D300 review suggests that the Nikon D300 is a great camera for the budding professional and is highly recommended.