First outing with D3300

[Graham]

Yesterday, we took the dog for a walk at a local wood.  I have never taken a good picture in this wood, don't know why but the light is poor no matter what and... well, it is boring.  However, the white Labrador loves the muddy paths and puddles so it was a great day for her if not in the back of the car..... 

 

Took the new Nikon D3300 for its first outing.  I wasn't expecting much and to be honest, I didn't get much.  Although a bright sunny and frosty morning, the light in the wood was as flat as usual and even at ISO800, I was getting 1/60 @f5.6  

 

On the Nikon D40, shots at ISO800 would be unusable and I would not have got anything at all but I was pleasantly surprised by what I did get from the D3300.  OK, they needed work.  They were all flat as expected but a few tweaks brought them almost to life.  I did shoot in RAW+JPEG but I have now switched the camera to RAW only as the JPEGs were superfluous.

 

There is noise at ISO 800 but i quite like it.  Instead of the clumpy grit I am used to, the noise reminds me of grain in film, which I loved.  However, view the files full screen and it was hardly visible, it only really shows at 1:1 which is huge having gone from 6mp to 24.

 

First thoughts on the D3300 are very positive.  The larger rear screen and new layout means I can clearly read the settings without putting my glasses on, always a pain with the D40.  It is lighter than the D40 so having it around my neck for 2 hours was no problem at all. I was wearing knitted thermal gloves and never needed to take them off to operate the camera.  I totally forgot about the Live view so I don't get to try it.

 

On the D40 the three focus points confused the hell out of me at the best of times but they are large and easy to see in the viewfinder.  If three confused me, you can imagine what eleven tiny ones did to me!  I really need to get to grips with the focusing modes as there was a bit of random focusing going on in some shots

 

Anyway, not works of art by any means but at least I have something new before the end of 2014 and am looking forward to better in the new year.

 

 

 

 

[Craftysnapper]

Nice pics Graham and glad to hear you are happy with it.

[ChrisLumix]

I know exactly what you mean about 'ugly noise' versus 'film grain'. I'm still shooting JPEGs on my new camera (even if I decided to switch to RAW there isn't a RAW converter for the platform I'm using that supports the new camera's RAW files). However, I've turned down the NR to -5 which gives even JPEGs a more uniform noise more akin to film grain. And it only really begins to show at ISO 3200, though at 6400 it's still very usable.

 

I was amused to read you were struggling with 11 focus points - try 49!!! To be honest, I don't bother - I stick to the 'old school' tried & tested method of a single central point, which I use for the main subject, depress the shutter halfway to lock, recompose, and shoot.

[JHFoto]

It always takes a while to learn how to use a new camera..................

[Paul]

Good to find a camera your happy with, onwards and upwards now.

Paul.