D300 wins an Oscar Locked

Okay....maybe it's a bit early. I've only played with the camera for an hour. After lunch I'll take my son out and put it through some good shooting.
But here are my initial impressions:

1) All of the controls are placed perfectly. Very pleased with this!

2) Forget everything you've heard and everything you believe....that rear LCD is worth the whole cost difference between this and everything below it. It's that good. You can use a loupe on it (take of plastic cover first) and it's just a major improvement. What was once somewhat useful for judging shots is now hugely so.

3) Live View

Guess what? Live view is not to be underestimated, especially as a tool for MACRO. But the D300 is making things even better with that rear LCD. You can judge crisp focus in live view and folks who shoot small stuff will LOVE it.

4) Dynamic range

I'm always shooting pics of my son and we have hard light blasting through our East windows. I know what the D200 and D80 and 30D could do an this is certainly better-this was taken with the 18-200vr...not great, but the DR was heavily tested....oversharpened due to sloppy camera work...

5) I only tried a few rough AF tests, but they worked very well and thus far I'm very impressed with it. Lenses tried so far: 70-200vr, 18-200vr and 85mm 1.4.

In my opinion that rear screen alone will sell a lot of D300's. It's a killer. I'd seen it before, but when you see it next to the regular LCDs, forget it. You'll have to have it. I can't wait until they cram a 3.5 or 4 back there.

Great fun day and cheers,

Thomas