Using the D300s again

I recently went FX with the D600 then D800. I originally planned to sell the 300s but couldn't bring myself to do it as I'd only bought it 18 months ago.

I initially worried about it just sitting in my bag as a second body and never seeing the light of day, not a fitting way for a camera of this calibre to end its days.

My wife and I are currently in the process of setting up a studio and we've been trying the lights, pocket wizards soft boxes etc. I ended up grabbing the D300s over the D800 as the file sizes are so much more manageable. Also in a studio you don't need to do much if any cropping so 12 megapixels is ample. Additionally, I control ISO with studio lights so I can keep it in the range were it produces the best results.

As I sold my DX lenses I'm using the 24-120 F4 and 70-200 2.8 which are absolutely in their sweet spot on a DX body.

The long and short of it is that the 300s is still producing stunning quality images and will now be my studio camera. The D800 can remain mainly as a landscape and wildlife where it does have the edge.

I don't regret getting the D800 as it's much better at high ISO, the dynamic range is excellent and for a brief window nobody is going to turn up next to me with more megapixels on their DSLR , but I don't think I'd reached the limit with the D300s.

Having the D300s will help minimize the shutter actuation on the D800. If your current set-up is working well, I see no reason on not to keep the camera.

I hear this far too often "my DXXX still produced outstanding images" Did you think that once a person buys the "latest greatest" their previous body quits produce the stellar images they used to bragg about? Hell No! I still have my D200 & 700 used them just about as much as I use the D4 & D800. I love the D200 because it makes me "think" and be more constructive. The D700 what can I say I think Nikon hit a home run with this baby, virtually indestructible, great file size and IQ. I have this body with me all the time either as my main or backup or with a different lens when shooting with the D4. Yes the D4 & D800 are outstanding, however so is the D200 & 700

Funny you mention the file size with the D800. I actually find myself shooting with it in 1.2 or 1.5 almost exclusively when I'm birding now, just because I know I'll be cropping and I can save myself a lot of room on the hard drive (Lightroom crops are nondestructive, so you never remove the excess in that 36MP file).

Jake I have considered and tried shooting in crop mode but I end up framing using the whole frame and wondering why half the image is missing. Just me not seeing the guides.

Another thing I've noticed in recent days is the size of tiffs that CS6 creates when I edit and now the Nik Software. A few tweaks with Nik in CS6 and I have a 2-300MB file!!

Geoffc said:

Jake I have considered and tried shooting in crop mode but I end up framing using the whole frame and wondering why half the image is missing. Just me not seeing the guides.

Another thing I've noticed in recent days is the size of tiffs that CS6 creates when I edit and now the Nik Software. A few tweaks with Nik in CS6 and I have a 2-300MB file!!

Click to expand...

I hear you. There's a way of masking those unused areas to remind you.

As for CS6, start using Smart Objects and you'll think you were getting away cheap with 300MB. I've wound up with some in the 800-900MB TIFFs, and if I save as a PSD I manage to get it down to 700-800MB. It's a space consumer, for sure.

Jake, thanks for the pointer to masking out the unused FX area. I had a quick look into it and found out you just turn AF illumination point (menu A5) off. I may actually start using the other modes now. I think I need to read the manual properly as I'm probably missing out on stuff. Because I've had a few Nikons before I just skim read it.

Did you see the firmware update today for the D800. Whilst I won't be getting the 800mm lens that it now supports, I can now use manual mode in live view and switch off the live exposure view which made it pretty useless in that mode. I've downloaded and installed the update.

Thanks for the pointer about smart objects as I was going to start using them to allow re-editing changes.