Toby Keller - Night Photography Blog

D300 Landscapes II

A couple more landscapes taken with the D300 and a long (ish) exposure time.

I'm really liking the colors I've been getting with the D300 - nice and saturated, with a much more pleasingly natural range than my D70. The dynamic range seems at least a stop or so larger, and I've had very few blown highlights since I got the camera.

Gotta run - it's 6am and I've gotta go shoot before work!

Labels: d300 landscape hendrys evening

D300 Long Exposure Night Test

So tonight I took my D300 out to Mesa beach and shot a few tests to see what it's really capable of. The following shots are all taken with the D300 set to Manual, ISO 200, f/6.7, and roughly 5 minute exposures. Lens is a Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 with a UV filter on (forgot to take it off... oops). None of the pictures in this review have had any post processing done besides levels/curves and White Balance tweaks.

Let me first say that the camera is a blast to shoot with after my D70. It's much easier to align dark night landscapes in the bigger viewfinder. The rear LCD shooting info display is nice, though I found it a bit bright, taking a bit away from my night vision, so I stuck to the lighted top LCD.

Second, and more importantly, the shot above was taken with NO NOISE REDUCTION AT ALL. That's a 5 minute shot, in relatively warm conditions, with no perceivable amp glow or extraneous noise. There are two or three hot pixels, but these are even easier to deal with than dust (which the D300 shouldn't suffer from too bad, what with the dust removal feature).

I can't emphasize enough how freakin ecstatic this makes me! This cuts my shooting time in half, allowing me to experiment more and make the most of the changing light and weather conditions at night. I'm as happy as Dick Cheney with a shotgun and an unlimited Pentagon budget. It's that good.

Here are some 100% crops:

From picture above. Noise reduction off.

From next full sized picture below. Shows top right corner of the image. Noise reduction off.

For reference, this is from a similar exposure with Long Exposure NR turned on. I can't see a whole lot of difference.

Next full moon, I'll try some light painting to see how much better the CMOS sensor handles light painting. My D70 shots always had significant blooming that I thought was chromatic aberration, even though it showed up with lenses that I thought exhibited next to no CA any other time. Till then, here are a couple more samples, sans noise reduction:

Labels: D300 night "long exposure"

D300 Landscape Test

I took the D300 out this evening for some sunset landscape shots. I'm impressed - this thing is a joy to shoot. I picked up an MC-30 remote release cable for tripod shooting. I thought I would miss the wireless D70 remote, but this one offers shutter half-press functionality that the wireless was sorely missing.

I'll be back out later tonight for those long exposure night shots I've been wanting to try out. I'll write up a more in-depth review then.

Labels: d300 evening hendrys sunset

D300 Long Exposure plans foiled

I was planning to head out last night with the D300 and make some long exposures to test it's night shooting chops. I want to get a sense for the amount of noise and amp glow with the NR off - my goal would be to shoot 4 minute exposures without the time-wasting dark-frame noise reduction having to run. I doubt I'll be able to, but only a test will tell. Unfortunately, Mother Nature decided to throw some really thick cloud cover at us yesterday, and the moon was obscured. Not enough light to shoot by, I'm afraid. So hopefully tonight will be clearer, and I can proceed with the D300 long exposure test.

Labels: d300

D300 - I haz wun

I'm in new camera gear heaven right now. My D300 arrived a day early from Adorama, and good Lord I didn't know what I was missing. This is the greatest chunk of metal with a lens on that I've ever had. I'm taking it out this evening to do some long exposure shots by the still-relatively-full moon - I'll report back with an in-depth review of it's night shooting capabilities vis-a-vis the D70. If it performs anywhere near as well as it handles, I'll be happy as a bivalve mollusc!

Labels: d300

Changing Leaves, Ridgeway, South Carolina

Just got back from a visit to South Carolina to see my Ma. I hadn't been back there in 2 years! Too long... The leaves were just right when I got there. Already dulling down a few days later...