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Nikon D300 Underwater Photography Tests With Sailfish

by Berkley White

Sea & Sea released us an early version of their MDX-D300 underwater housing for the Nikon D300 just in time for my sailfish expedition on December 31, 2007. Personally, I was really hoping for their MDX-D3 housing for the NikonD3, but I was thrilled to have the opportunity to put the Nikon D300 and Sea & Sea MDX-D300 through a real world test.

Sailfish were a perfect test subject for the Nikon D300. These fish torpedoes require smooth camera pans and a shutter speeds of 1/250th to capture sharp frames. At such high shutter speeds, I was required to shoot at ISO 400 or greater to maintain apertures of f4 to F5.6. The new low noise CMOS sensor in the Nikon D300 was a perfect match. I brought my higher megapixel Nikon D2x as backup, but it never got wet. Our expedition was unlucky with weather, but the Nikon D300 and Sea & Sea MDX-D30 housing performed flawlessly.

Sunballs are back!
I hesitate to be the boy that cried wolf, but I've never captured sunballs as good as those I've seen with this test dive of the Nikon D300. I promis to post more details on all my sunball tests asap. Camera settings and raw conversion techniques do seem to make a significant difference. More to follow...

Read the rest of Berkley's first dive's with the Nikon D300 and Sea & Sea MDX housing on Backscatter.