This first shot was taken with the D300 and the DX 17-55mm fully zoomed-out. We used Live View to shoot at a higher angle, although the screen became hard to see in direct sunlight.

The image is very natural-looking and in-camera processing has removed any evidence of chromatic aberrations. It’s lacking the ultimate crispness of some cameras, but that can be fixed with a slight boost in sharpness.

The camera easily kept the approaching boat in sharp focus, and the crops again show a pleasing, natural-looking result with no electronic artefacts. As you’d hope, there’s also no noise issues with the increase to 200 ISO.

There’s some softening in the corners due to the lens, but areas closer to the middle are detailed and well-defined.

The result is again very natural-looking with the D300’s flash providing a useful fill without becoming obvious or over-powering.

The crops reveal plenty of detail, and as you’d hope at 200 ISO under bright conditions, there’s no noise artefacts.

Another shot taken at 200 ISO, although with the zoom working at an equivalent of 17mm to capture a wide view.

By now you’ll recognise the D300’s trademark natural-looking processing using its default JPEG settings. Some may prefer a slight boost in sharpness and contrast, but others will appreciate its non-electronic style.

The increase to 400 ISO hasn’t had an adverse effect on noise levels under these well-lit conditions, and the crops show lots of detail, although again some may prefer a boost in sharpening.

The darker areas of this image reveal a fine smattering of noise when viewed at 100%, but it’s nothing to be concerned about.

Our second indoor shot, this time at 800 ISO, suffered from the same underexposure issues as above, so we applied +0.3EV compensation. To deliver a sufficient depth of field, we closed the aperture to f11 and mounted the camera on a tripod for its half second exposure.

Despite the increase in sensitivity, the crops are still smooth and detailed with little evidence of noise. Other samples at 800 ISO though show a drop in quality due to NR smearing, as seen in our Nikon D300 Noise results.

Our final indoor shot was taken with the sensitivity increased to 1600 ISO. The D300 again metered to protect highlights at the cost of shadow detail, so we applied +0.7EV here.

The crops reveal a noticeable increase in noise, but there’s still lots of detail in this particular example. We would advise also looking at our D300 Noise results for more examples at higher ISOs.

You can see how its rivals handled similar subject matter in our Canon 40D samples and Sony A700 samples.