I’ve placed an order for the new D300. I’ve started selling the Olympus E-1 outfit on eBay with the FL-50 flash unit going first.
My reasoning? I just am not that excited about the images I’ve been seeing from the E-1. Over the past year I’ve adapted my vision to the D80, shooting much more with it than I ever did with the E-1.
As a system, Nikon is more attractive to me at this point. I’ll be getting a free Capture NX license with the D300, a $149 that I was going to spend anyway. At first, I tried NX again to get better RAW conversions for Photoshop work. But I’ve absolutely fallen in love with the NX control point interface. It fits the way I work well and provides a simpler path than PS CS3 layers and history brush. It gets me just about everything I’ve been using in Photoshop.
While I’ve considered just sticking with the D80, I really want the 100% viewfinder of the D300. I had it with the Olympus E-1 and have missed it with the D80. There are several ergonomic issues that I have with the D80 which I understand are not problems with the D200/300. For example, I’m forever trying to change exposure on the D80 and instead scrolling through images on the back LCD. The D80 is modal in it’s control wheel usage, violating the idea of one control, one function that I think a camera should have.
I expect to have the first D300 images by the end of the week. I’m not expecting anything substantially different from the D80 in terms of image tone and quality.