Camera Labs

Hello everyone,

I finally decided to buy my first digital SLR, despite all the reviews you read on this site are not yet able to decide which digital SLR to take.

There are currently undecided between the Canon EOS 40D and the Nikon D300, which one can advise me?

Thank you very much

It might be helpful for us to know some more details before we can provide any suggestions or advice.

What are your plans vis-a-vis the type of photography you will be taking? What is your level of experience? What landed you at this level of camera as opposed to something more or less?

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Olympus e-620 / 14-42mm / 40-150mm
Metz 48 AF-1
Kata 3-N-1 20, LowePro Orion Mini, LowePro Nova 2
My Flickr

I certainly apologize for not having put a few more details.

At the moment I use a Panasonic DMC FZ-7 which I use mainly for shooting car racing events. Unfortunately, now that Panasonic is not enough for me more and I decided to switch to a DSLR.

So I need a DSLR camera that is quick to take pictures, and fallen on the Canon 40D and Nikon D300 DSLR cameras that because there are two in terms of price I can afford.

I presume, then, that you are looking at used cameras, then, because both have been replaced at least once since they were released in 2007.

Given this - what is your budget? You can get some pretty snappy performance from the latest Sony DSLR offerings -- although the product path to the future has been somewhat stymied by Sony with their recent decisions to focus on the NEX series and not on FF.

Pentax offer some good performing cameras as well. Not to say that Nikon and Canon don't -- I think that if you are budget constrained, you may want to look at investing more in lenses and less in body. This is just my opinion, though, ymmv.

_________________
Olympus e-620 / 14-42mm / 40-150mm
Metz 48 AF-1
Kata 3-N-1 20, LowePro Orion Mini, LowePro Nova 2
My Flickr

I'd go with the Nikon any day. I used to own a Canon 40D and frankly I wasn't very happy with it. Or rather with one aspect of it... the pictures. I shoot a lot in low light, so I tend to use higher iso-s. And anything above iso 800 was not usable for my taste. Lots of chroma noise with visible banding. If you use Lightroom and shoot in raw its easy to correct, but frankly I don't post process every picture I take. Apart from that it was a superb camera.
If i may ask, how much did you find the D300 for? I was looking at the D300s. But it was around 40% more expensive than the D7000. So I went with the latter.
I went with Nikon for a variety of reasons though. The most important being the image quality. I just like how nikon handles noise, it has a more grain like appearance compared to canons's blotchy squares. Some people don't mind that though. So you really have to make up your own mind.
Close second is the fact that my sister "borrowed" my 40D shortly after I got it and never gave it back. Since she went on to study digital media with a focus on photography because of that, it didn't feel right to demand it back thus i went with nikon so she couldn't "borrow" any more gear from me.
I did prefer the ergonomics of the Canon a bit more though. But thats comparing the D7000, not the D300.
I would suggest you try out how each feels in your hands as well.
Hope I didn't confuse you even more. I remember how I felt when I was buying my first dslr.
Cheers

Given the choice right now, I would probably go for the D7000 over the competition. I can't say the same would stand with the next round of cameras, though.

_________________
Olympus e-620 / 14-42mm / 40-150mm
Metz 48 AF-1
Kata 3-N-1 20, LowePro Orion Mini, LowePro Nova 2
My Flickr

To respond to Woor, I watched some on ebay.co.uk and offer prices of the Nikon D300 are around £ 300 and £ 400 !!

After what I wrote jwnrw, I'll try to look a little 'specifications in order to get an idea of pentax !!

One of the things that puts Pentax ahead of the crowd is weather sealing - found mostly in higher end cameras.

_________________
Olympus e-620 / 14-42mm / 40-150mm
Metz 48 AF-1
Kata 3-N-1 20, LowePro Orion Mini, LowePro Nova 2
My Flickr

But I think now I will try the two DSLR cameras so as to better understand where I am especially in terms of comfort and design of the body of DSLR.

I read that both the 40D and D300 are tropicalized, this means that under light rain, the two digital SLR should resist ?

What do you think would be a good brand of digital security ?