Camcorderinfo reviews Nikon D300

Camcorderinfo reviews the Nikon D300, and while they did like it's low-light capabilities (it just beat out the Canon 7D in low-light performance) they were generally unhappy that Nikon didn't add any new video capabilities:
The Nikon D300s is not the camera to get if you're serious about using a DSLR to record video. It doesn't have a good set of video controls and its overall video performance is far behind similarly-priced models from Canon and Panasonic. The fact that the D300s can't even record a Full HD image (its resolution tops out at 1280 x 720) is probably its biggest downside from a video perspective.
Remember that Camcorderinfo is reviewing the camera for video; stills photographers can still love the D300s!


Over the past month or so I've come across a number of photographers complaining about Nikon's lack of involvement in the HD side of the SLR market. Philip Bloom made a comment about it in his interview on Cinema 5D, and in the Lensflare 002 podcast, Philip Bloom (again), media producer Scott Bourne and Steve Weiss from Zacuto go off on Nikon as well.

They really expected Nikon to at least match the features Canon has added. A number of Nikon owners are now wondering if they need to jump ship...


It's kind of ironic that Nikon seems oblivious to this market; back in the day of the great conspiracy theories (when people were sure that Canon was hamstringing the video capabilities of the 5D Mark II because they disn't want to disrupt their video camera business) a lot of people thought that the market was ripe for Nikon's taking. Without a rival video business, Nikon would be able to turn their SLRs into capable video cameras without any limitation.

Instead, we've seen Canon continue to evolve and enhance their products - even promising a firmware update for the 5D Mark II - while Nikon seems to drift along without concern about this marketplace.

Of course, those of us who are excited about HD DSLRs imagine we're a big part of the market; since we're all talking to each other, we might imagine that we're more significant than we really are. Nikon may have decided that the small additional sales are insignificant compared to the added work they'd have to do to really challenge Canon in this market segment.

Camcorderinfo: Nikon D300s DSLR Camera Review

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