The Nikon P300 beats the competing Canon S95 and Panasonic LX-5 in the price range itself.Its a class apart.The camera has a lot of external controls that make changing of settings quick and easy.Its solid build and ultra compact pocket size makes it portable and comfortable to handle.The small rubber thumb grip in the back is worth mentioning as it makes a difference while shooting.
As a general comparison with its competitors the P300 is quite responsive. The start up is quick once you turn off the welcome screen it would start up within 1 second max. Browsing between menus and playback of photos are really fast. With P300 you can start shooting from any mode you are in.
How’s Does the Nikon P300 Perform?
Now lets clear our mind from the P7000. The P300 contains none of the features of the P7000. The focus was fast and there is no on screen lag either. The Nikon P300 uses smaller batteries and the battery lasted for 200 shots on my first session. Now the charger Nikon provides with does not charge batteries directly so you need to buy an extra charger to charge your extra batteries when you are shooting with the camera. At f/1.8 maximum aperture the shots are great but the more you zoom the faster lens you get (f/4.9 at telephoto range).It also takes low light shots, please make sure its at 24mm for low light conditions.
The image quality of the Nikon P300 directly depends on its sensor.It has a 1/2.3″ sensor is 4.6 x 6.2mm, or 28 square millimeters of light capture area. The higher end compacts are using sensors that are 5.7 x 7.6mm, or 43 square millimeters,now we had lost 1/3 of the light collection area. We would have noise and Nikon does not provide noise control, it also lacks raw output to control noise reduction.Now if you are a pixel peeper then you are sure to bee greeted with crude noise impacted edges.
If you want to takes prints from the shots of the camera kindly avoid it because it wont give perfect edges due to the noise. Video quality is and there is a little more control in it’s rolling shutter than many of the cameras I have seen.
I am also impressed by the firm ware implementation on the Nikon P300, its actually better than the P7000.The JPEG output is a little less “false” than many other cameras with 1/2.3″ sensors. Now I can’t say the Nikon P300 is comparable with the big league, G12, XZ-1 and the TL500 but I can say it is better than Canon S95 or Panasonic LX-5 as a pocket camera.
How Does The Nikon P300 Handle?
It has a solid, smooth metal finish on the body along with a mode dial which has the basics setting like PASM, scene, movie etc. with the LCD navigation. The command dial handles the shutter speed and the directional pad dial controls the aperture. The direction pad is crowded with additional functions but what I hate is the lack of assignable buttons and no visible histogram. You can only find histogram while setting exposure compensation or on playback. You can find stereo microphones on the top plate of the camera and you may accidentally turn off the camera from time to time as the on/off button is just behind the shutter release.
Nikon P300 