Terry
New member
My D300 is now just over a week old and has been getting a workout in Carmel. Part of the workout is me coming to grips of how I want to use it versus Leica and coming up with a sensible lens strategy. The first morning I was a bit extreme shooting M8 plus CV12 and the 70-300 lens .
I've found you either buy the f2.8's with lots of bulk or you are just plain SLOW (completely ignores the prime strategy). But for outdoors where I wanted the zoom range I am fine. For now and for how I shoot, I have no reason to go out an buy the 2.8s on the wide side because I have such wonderful Leica fast glass that is so much more compact. When in NYC, my home, I usually pick a "focal length of the day" and that is all I take out (28 cron and 50 lux win most of the time).
Logically, I should be using the 70-200mm f2.8 but wanted to see if I could cope with the 70-300 and get good results with less bulk.
Except when on a tripod, I've been using the Auto ISO feature which I really like. I have it set to 200 and let it bump up whenever I hit a minimum shutter speed and I have the max ISO set to 3200 for convenience. Depending on conditions, I change the minimum shutter. For instance outdoor hand held on the 70-300 I bump up the minimum shutter (before ISO bump) to 1/100th to minimize camera shake problems. Inside on a 50mm prime I dropped it way down to 1/30.
As a small note that might be useful, I have the camera set up with both a hand grip and a neck strap. While out shooting I find the handgrip very comfortable to use and much less tiring than having it around the neck. The neck strap comes into play when I am trying to shoot the M8. Nikon makes a handstrap that mounts in the tripod socket. Guy has modified it for me so that it attaches to my RRS quick release plate.
This was a printing workshop and I wanted to do at least one big print from the D300 to see how it looked. I printed this shot on an Epson 3800 at 16x24 on Harmon Gloss and it simply looks stunning. Great sharp detail in far rocks and houses.
50mm f.18 lens shot at f8 for 6 seconds ISO 200
View attachment 2940
I've found you either buy the f2.8's with lots of bulk or you are just plain SLOW (completely ignores the prime strategy). But for outdoors where I wanted the zoom range I am fine. For now and for how I shoot, I have no reason to go out an buy the 2.8s on the wide side because I have such wonderful Leica fast glass that is so much more compact. When in NYC, my home, I usually pick a "focal length of the day" and that is all I take out (28 cron and 50 lux win most of the time).
Logically, I should be using the 70-200mm f2.8 but wanted to see if I could cope with the 70-300 and get good results with less bulk.
Except when on a tripod, I've been using the Auto ISO feature which I really like. I have it set to 200 and let it bump up whenever I hit a minimum shutter speed and I have the max ISO set to 3200 for convenience. Depending on conditions, I change the minimum shutter. For instance outdoor hand held on the 70-300 I bump up the minimum shutter (before ISO bump) to 1/100th to minimize camera shake problems. Inside on a 50mm prime I dropped it way down to 1/30.
As a small note that might be useful, I have the camera set up with both a hand grip and a neck strap. While out shooting I find the handgrip very comfortable to use and much less tiring than having it around the neck. The neck strap comes into play when I am trying to shoot the M8. Nikon makes a handstrap that mounts in the tripod socket. Guy has modified it for me so that it attaches to my RRS quick release plate.
This was a printing workshop and I wanted to do at least one big print from the D300 to see how it looked. I printed this shot on an Epson 3800 at 16x24 on Harmon Gloss and it simply looks stunning. Great sharp detail in far rocks and houses.
50mm f.18 lens shot at f8 for 6 seconds ISO 200
View attachment 2940