No thoughts on upgrading

[Ben Casper]

Despite being bombarded with the latest and greatest from camera manufacturers during the lockdown I have no intention of abandoning my D300 which has served me well and will continue to do so for several years to come.
I am content!

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[Palouse]

Old friends are best!

 

[hotrod4x5]

I have had a d300 since the first month they were released. It still works great. Up until this year I used it for a big paying job at Easter. In my experience, the meter works better and gives more accurate readings compared to my D800.

 

[gchappel]

Cameras are tools, nothing more. Some of the newer bodies have some specific advantages. These advances would include lower noise at high iso, faster focus, and higher resolution, to name but a few. If these qualities are not needed in your images, a newer camera will not help your work. The d300 took wonderful images when it was released- and it still will! It has not changed, its ability to take great images did not decrease with time.
So enjoy and go do your photography.
Gary

 

[kilofoxtrott]

Hi Ben,
I'm still using a D700 and a D3S...

These cameras and me are a perfect match.
No need to upgrade.

Kind regards
Klaus

 

[Ben Casper]

Thank you for you replies.
My regards to all

 

[Ben Casper]

Old friends are best!

Thanks Nick and Klaus for often supporting my posts and the use of the early Nikon series of cameras. It amazes me how these early series can still produce great images, and when I am allowed out of lockdown I hope to produce some other images rather than “cats and coffee pots”?
Regards Ben

 

[gchappel]

I was listening to a podcast today, which made me think of this post.
They basically said: Think of all the famous photographs you have ever seen. They were all taken with lesser equipment than we own right now.
In other words, we are living in a great age to be a photographer. If they can make terrific images on glass plates, think what we should be able to do now.
Rarely, and only in specific instances, does a new camera make my art better. I wish it did.
Gary

 

[7006]

I was listening to a podcast today, which made me think of this post.
They basically said: Think of all the famous photographs you have ever seen. They were all taken with lesser equipment than we own right now.
In other words, we are living in a great age to be a photographer. If they can make terrific images on glass plates, think what we should be able to do now.
Rarely, and only in specific instances, does a new camera make my art better. I wish it did.
Gary

Isn’t there a case for :
“think of all the photographs that were NOT taken because the technology did not allow for it” ?

 

[barry lloyd]

My D300 at the moment is in an airtight plastic bag with silica sachets . Nothing wrong with the pictures but the back screen is a bit faint. A common problem from other posts I have read,
link
https://www.google.com/search?q=nikk...hrome&ie=UTF-8.

The theory is that moisture in the air seeps into the body over a period of months/years and causes the rear screen to mist up. Looked at mine yesterday after 3 days in the bag and, if it is not wishful thinking , it seems to be a bit clearer.
I don't use it that much but I still have a10-24mm DX Nikon lens for those wider shots

 

[soxOZ]

I have & still love using my D300 along with my D80 and D700, but last year, got a D810. I still use all of them equally, but the main advantage of the D810 is if I have to heavily crop photos it does it well from the 36Mp files, plus it does better at high ISO, but I still love using the D300 & D700 and extremely happy with the image quality I get from them.

 

[Mitchell]

Funny, but I never took to my D300. Not really sure why. It now sits in my cabinet collecting dust. I was smitten with the files from my D700 around the same time and still love that camera.

 

[Minuteman3]

My D300 & D700 moved to new homes long ago, but I still have a ton of images from both that are very important to us (family, trips, etc.) They still look terrific.

Actually .... lately I have been re-processing some of the older shots using some more recent tools, especially DxO, and finding out there is a lot of life left in those pixels!! For some, the improvement is really dramatic.

Ken

 

[wrighton]

I still have a D300 which was the second purchase of my 6 Nikon DSLR's. For years the D300 and 700 covered my hobby very well. My enjoyment for photographing BIF and Wildlife took me to the D500, not that the D300 wouldn't cover those subjects as it did for many years. Currently the D300 with a Sigma 100 - 400 is still in use as the wife carried it last week during a local US Fish & Wildlife Refuge morning hike. The D300 paired with the 200 - 500 f5.6 I found to produce some very nice photos.

 

[Superbaldguy]

If you notice my signature, I’m seemingly living in the glorious past of Nikon. 12MP is just fine on a DX sensor, my files are reasonably sized and I can knock off 20x30 prints with ease. I can probably scrounge up more D300 bodies (or even D90’s) for the foreseeable future very cheaply. I love my ancient D200 as no other Nikon body produces skin tones like this old beast. I might as well keep these cameras as they are not worth much to anyone else but me...

 

[gchappel]

Isn’t there a case for :
“think of all the photographs that were NOT taken because the technology did not allow for it” ?

Interesting thought. We, of coarse, will never know what pictures were not taken.
All the new fancy cameras make the difficult easier to do, more portable, and more affordable than ever before. But I am not sure they are really breaking new ground.
Eadward Muybridge did fast motion imaging in the 1870's.
Heck, Henri Cartier-Bresson was capturing the decisive moment about 100 years ago.
It would be interesting to see what images can be taken with the newest cameras, that could not be taken with the d300, or even older cameras.
There are probably some esoteric items that can be photographed now that could not be captured before- but I can not think of any.
It may be easier, but does that count in art?
Quality may be slightly improved in the newer cameras, but non photographers rarely care about that. I personally saw an exhibition of Ansel Adams works, his prints. They were soft. They were still wonderful- I suspect I was one of the few that day that noticed they were soft. Only photographers care, others look at the image- not the pixels.
On the other side of the argument, should we wait for better equipment before we go make images? Equipment will always get better.
I just do not see the images from the true artists significantly improving over time.
I hope I am wrong, but at the same time I am going to shoot today,.
Even with the best equipment, I can not duplicate something as simple as a pepper. I have tried. My newest and greatest camera does not give me any talent. Bummer.

Gary

 

[MNglass]

I unabashedly love equipment but I also love making images. This has been true since I first used my father's Yashicamat (and later Polaroid) when I was probably 8 or 10.

Of course new and better equipment doesn't improve photography but it expands the envelope of what is possible to do - you can always compress the dynamic range (or resolution, or micro-contrast) but you can't expand what isn't in the data in the first place.

What I find particularly interesting is that when you read tutorials about making digital images more 'film like' they tend to have you reduce sharpness (and reduce clarity and structure), then crush the shadows:

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"Opening the doors to end racism'

The suggestion is that 'digital' has certain characteristics which differentiate it from film and further, different sensors and cameras have 'signatures' in much the same way different film stocks did. I'm not surprised people still love their D300's, D200's, and D700's in much the same way I always liked Ilford film for the look I could get.

Just remember that probably one of the most iconic images of all time was Joe Rosenthal's Flag Raising on Iwo Jima and he used a monster (certainly by today's standards) Speed Graflex 4x5. Right time, right place, right skills - luck, opportunity and talent.

 

[TomP]

In reference to technology, then and now, I will share this hi-speed camera pic, I think it was taken with a D200, on a cloudy Lyon day. I still shoot with my 300, mainly when I need its faster focus. They are so cheap now I thought of buying another for a granddaughter. One D200 died and my daughter has the other.

1885 High-Speed Camera
Built by the Lumiere Brothers

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[7006]

Interesting thought. We, of coarse, will never know what pictures were not taken.
All the new fancy cameras make the difficult easier to do, more portable, and more affordable than ever before. But I am not sure they are really breaking new ground.
Eadward Muybridge did fast motion imaging in the 1870's.
Heck, Henri Cartier-Bresson was capturing the decisive moment about 100 years ago.
It would be interesting to see what images can be taken with the newest cameras, that could not be taken with the d300, or even older cameras.
There are probably some esoteric items that can be photographed now that could not be captured before- but I can not think of any.
It may be easier, but does that count in art?
Quality may be slightly improved in the newer cameras, but non photographers rarely care about that. I personally saw an exhibition of Ansel Adams works, his prints. They were soft. They were still wonderful- I suspect I was one of the few that day that noticed they were soft. Only photographers care, others look at the image- not the pixels.
On the other side of the argument, should we wait for better equipment before we go make images? Equipment will always get better.
I just do not see the images from the true artists significantly improving over time.
I hope I am wrong, but at the same time I am going to shoot today,.
Even with the best equipment, I can not duplicate something as simple as a pepper. I have tried. My newest and greatest camera does not give me any talent. Bummer.

Gary

I was thinking obvious ones such as astrophotography, underwater photos, time lapses, rapid action shots in low light, accurate low light photos...
It is also from a logic standpoint, developing an argument based on things we have (photos that the cameras of the past could take) and excluding things we do not (photos the technology of the past could not take) is incomplete.

 

[Randy]

the d300 was a good camera but compared to a D500 there is no comparison, newer technology makes capturing the same great photos easier. The only body I miss was the D700