Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Hi All, I was downtown yesterday with my student's taking my street photography workshop, and on my way back to the car, I stopped in at Henry's downtown, and got to play with the new D300s.

I am really impressed with what they did with the body, basically being an upgrade of the D300... it feels and handles identically to my D700 and the D300. They put a live view button on the back! Thank god -- because the placement of the D700's live view is just dumb, being on the selection wheel.

I also tried the camera out in the Quiet mode. The shutter noise it cut down by at least 1/2 of the normal shutter operation. Cool feature, but not entirely as quiet as I thought it might be.

Other than that.... I didn't see much else new with the camera over the previous model. I am leaning towards picking up one of these puppies sometime between now and Christmas, and giving my wife the D90. That is my initial thoughts right now.


David

Monique had a brand new shiny one on the Scavenger Hunt last weekend. .

The dual memory slots is a big deal for some people, especially on such a "low-end" body.

The dual memory slots are definately an excellent feature!

ok...

Indeed I did. It's a pretty big jump for me from my old d40. I'm still getting the hang of all the features (haven't had time to try all of them) so I don't know how much I'm able to fully critique it just yet. And again, my point of reference is a D40 so... I don't really know that I'm that well-equiped to give a full review of this camera. I do love how it seems that whenever I want to change a setting there's a button right where you'd expect it on the body - I rarely have to go into the menus. It was easy to take it out of the box and start taking good pictures - now I feel like I only have myself to blame for a failed picture.

Who am I kidding - I'm in love. I need to spend another day playing around with more features - my parents are visiting me right now so I haven't really had the chance. So far, I think it's a pretty awesome camera.

David, we talked about pricing at the social last week, and today I see that Aden has the D300s for $1769! Including taxes that's $2,000.09 Black's also has it on sale for $1,899.

This is quite a drop from the $2,099 list price a few weeks ago ($2,372 with taxes). I wonder if the pricing will hold or continue to drop; this is something I find hard to predict. Last year, I was hoping the D700 price would drop, but it really hasn't at all during 2009. (From a starting list price of $3299, it fell to as low as $2,700 around Christmas 2008 at Downtown Camera then went back up during early 2009; recently I saw it at Black's for $2,669 then go back up to $3,069 and now it's back to $2,769.

What do others think? Just curious.

I think prices will drop a bit as stores fight for X-mas dollars from us consumers. I'm looking at a D300 hoping prices will continue to fall at around $1200-$1300 mark. Depending on how low of a price the D300s or D700 go I may pick them up. Also looking at a Nikon 24-70, but prices for lenses do not fall as much.

I waited last year as I took my D3 money and bought stocks instead. Price of the stock has doubled by it does not pay any dividens. If I cash out, I'm taxed. We just can't win!

Oh! Wow - thanks for posting this! I'm going to go try to get it price matched to take advantage of this price drop.

Hey folks.. ya, I suspect that there is a price drop coming towards the Christmas season. Always is. I don't plan to get mine until Jan/Feb, hopefully in time for the trip to Vancouver in February.

Maybe I will wait until Xmas to buy something!

I just checked Aden's website right now and they increased the price to $1899! Pretty frustrating!

Oh my goodness - I should've run out yesterday to try to get price matched! I wonder if maybe the price they had listed was a mistake? I wonder how long it was listed that low?

Hopefully the price will drop back down a bit more in the next week or so (so I can still take advantage of the drop.)

I would've probably waited a little longer before buying the d300s but I'm going on a fairly big trip in December (3 weeks of photography in Japan) and wanted to be as familiar with my gear as possible before then.

Maybe it was a day only sale? I don't think it was a mistake - I see Aden does change prices fairly regularly. I guess it's best to keep on checking and make screenshots or printouts.

If I see I change I will make mention of it here.

Best reason for buying when you did. Also the more you use it the cheaper it is per shot and a trip to Japan is an excellent reason to take many shots.

I went to Aden today and they told me they have an in-store special (not published anywhere in print or on their website) for $1,669.99! May end soon (i.e., tomorrow) they told me.