18-200mm F3.5 Nikkor OR not?

Gary,

Thanks for the feedback on the Sigma. As I alluded to, I'm a bit leery of the 'off' brand lenses. It's good to hear someone else had good luck with it.

And yes, Mr. Rockwell is into some SERIOUS color saturation, how did he put it, Psychedelic I believe when referring to the colors the D3 and D300 put out.

Again, Thanks for the welcome!
 
Hi, all:

Signing on for the first time. I just got my D-300 and was very interested to hear comments about the "VIVID" setting, especially since we're taking 5 of our 7 kids to WDW for 5 days in the middle of January. (What better place to find "vivid" colors??!

So far, for my taste, the "vivid" setting is a bit intense on faces--it really intensifies the blush in the kids' faces.

Eager to hear others' thoughts!

Bob
 
Welcome to the boards Dr. Bob.

I would expect Vivid to be like Velvia at one point, which was not too great on skin color.

I've found that boosting the saturation in my RAW converter does the same thing, so I try to avoid using sat too much when doing so. Instead I use the vibrance setting, which seems to do that better. But I don't think any picture style creator for a dSLR has done that yet.
 
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Hi Dr. Bob and welcome to the boards.

I think you are only the second one here with a d300. I use a D80 and yes the Vivid setting is too much for skin tones. I think yhe d300 has even more saturation than the d80 or any previous nikon dslr for that matter.
On my D80, when including people in the pic, I usually set the mode to portrait if I'm in a hurry, but I usually prefer to set all my settings in the "custom" mode, and change the saturation there to "normal" from "enhanced".
Also consider changng the color mode to Ia from IIIa when taking photos of people.

I belive the d300 can save several preset combos for speedy settings. If thats true that was one of the things I really thought about.
 
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I thought I would go on a little further.

If you use Nikons preset "optimize image" options, A lot of decisons are made for you.
Sharpening, Contrast, and color mode are the ones that matter to me.

portrait= soft sharpening, color mode Ia, and low contrast
vivid= more sharpening, not sure of color mode, and med contrast
+ vivid = enahanced saturation, color mode IIIa, more sharpening, and super high contrast.

+vivid for me has too much contrast and looks too hard.
portrait is too soft for me for regular photos that I take.

This is why I go into custom and set the options the way I want them.
 
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Just thought I'd update everyone... those of you that know me, know that I'm a bargain hunter but I do not risk a bottom line price with a crappy retailer (too cheap usually = gray market!). I got this lens delivered 2 day to my door for $$601.89 which is roughly $150 cheaper than Ritz and far less than anyone else including the eBayers selling this lens for nearly $800! How you ask... first go to Shop.com, search for "18-200mm Super Zoom Lens", you should find it from eCost.com for $648, add it to your cart, now, at checkout apply this code for %10 off in the form of rebate to your CC: Get10Back ... it does work and hey, no driving out to Orlando for me!
 
D50 for me but probably going going to upgrade to a D300 shortly... also want the GPS on the camera itself because this GPS logging stuff sucks but it works for now.
 
Going full frame huh? That will definitely put you in a very exclusive club on these boards. I think there are only a couple people who have it and they recently joined
 
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D300 is still a crop.

The D3 is a different story and I don't think it's been made available to the non Nikon Professional members yet.
 
So wait for the D3 then in your opinion? I'm pretty happy with my D50 for now but I really like the idea an on camera GPS for GEO tagging which is an option on some of the higher end Nikon's.
 
D3=$5k, you will get a blackout cropped image with the 18-200 (from 12MP to 5.1MP), add another pound with mandatory vertical grip.

I guess it depends on where you are going.

If you think you'll eventually need to photograph motocross bikes with a wide angle lens from a literally inches away from the speeding bikes, then save up the money and wait for a few months for the D3.

Or wait till Photokina when I'm sure Nikon will release a prosumer FF camera to compete with Canon's D300 killah 5D replacement.

Then again, it wouldn't surprise me if Canon pulled the wrong move and ups the 5D's MP, which I don't want to see happen. The 5D, D300 and D3 all basically have the same resolution, so it's just the other features of the 5D that have to move up. (And don't forget about Sony's A700 in that discussion)

I see the D2(letters), D3, D200 and D300 (Fuji S5) support a GPS device. I guess the D300 has a menu for it as well?
 
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Yes, there is a menu option but it is still an external cable connected GPS receiver... I prefer an external GPS because the GPS units are getting better every month almost. I have a blue tooth GPS receiver right now that works even indoors (almost kept a signal through pirates). We should start topic about the GPS stuff now ;D
 
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