Nikon D300 Viewfinder
The D300's viewfinder is big and bright with nearly 100% frame coverage, a welcome improvement over the D200's 95%. Other than that, specs are identical to that of the D200: A pentaprism design with 0.94x magnification at 50mm and -1 diopter, a 19.5mm eyepoint, and diopter adjustment range of -2 to +1. The data readout is also essentially identical to that of the D200, although the design of the characters has been changed slightly for improved readability.
The biggest change of course, is the dramatic increase in the number of AF points, which now also extend a bit further out towards the sides of the frame that did those of the D200. Vertical coverage appears to be identical to that of the D200's AF grid.
The graphic and table below shows what information is displayed in D300's viewfinder.
1 |
On-demand grid
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13
|
ISO sensitivity
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2 |
Focus areas
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14 |
Number of exposures remaining
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Spot metering targets
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Number of shots remaining before memory buffer fills
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3 |
AF area brackets
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White balance recording indicator
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|
4 |
Battery status
|
Exposure / Flash compensation value
|
|
5 |
Focus indicator
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PC mode indicator
|
|
6 |
Metering mode
|
15
|
Flash-ready indicator
|
7 |
Autoexposure (AE) lock
|
16
|
FV lock indicator
|
8 |
Shutter speed
|
17
|
Flash sync
|
9 |
Aperture value
|
18
|
Aperture stop
|
10 |
Exposure mode
|
19
|
Electronic analog exposure display
|
11 |
Flash exposure compensation indicator
|
20
|
Auto ISO indicator
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| 12 | Exposure compensation indicator |
21
|
"K" (appears when memory remains for over 1000 frames)
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Viewfinder Test Results
Coverage
Very good accuracy with the optical viewfinder, excellent with the LCD monitor's Live View mode.
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| 70mm, Optical | 70mm, Live View LCD |
The Nikon D300's optical viewfinder proved quite accurate, with just over 97% coverage when measured with our Sigma 70mm f/2.8 test lens. This is very good, but just short of the 100% coverage Nikon claims. That said though, it's tough to frame to within a percent or two when squinting through a viewfinder eyepiece, so the actual accuracy could be a shade higher than we measured here. The camera's Live View LCD mode was extremely accurate however, with essentially 100% accuracy.
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