Review- Day 1:
Build Quality:
Right out of the box, the build quality of the D300 was clearly superior to my previous camera, a D100, which I have owned for 2 years. As such, all comparison will be to a 6 year old camera. Anyways, the build quality is superior in every way. The body feels incredibly solid, and fits the hand extremely well. I would feel no hesitation shooting one handed- the fit on the hand is ergonomically excellent. Both of the knobs are made of solid rubber, not plastic, as the D100 is. It is hefty, but not overly weighty. With my 18-55 mm DX lens it is a very good weight for walking around with. The shutter is not overly powerful, as it was with my D100- every-time I took a picture, the shutter slammed across in a very loud way. The D300 does not have this problem- it handles all of its tasks with an ease, quiet and speed that is very non-invasive. The D100's shutter was so loud that it felt intrusive when taking pictures of people. The buttons as well are all set up extremely intuitively, and have not really changed much from the D100. I assume they are extremely close to the D200 buttons as well.
Exposure:
This camera has some of the best metering skills that I have ever seen. It incorporates a new technology from Nikon called Active-D- it essentially brings out the shadows and depresses the highlights, allowing an amazingly balanced and beautiful photograph, even extremely adverse conditions. I was shooting in extremely difficult conditions today- there was a light cloud cover that allowed the sun to shine through- and even in these less than optimal conditions, the camera performed admirably- pumping out blue skies and not blowing out the highlights too much. Leaving it on “normal” seems to bring out the same results as the other settings (high or low), but is significantly better than leaving it off. This leads me to my next point- the color.
The colors on this camera are absolutely amazing. As I said, I was shooting in conditions today that were not the best. Despite that, even with automatic white balance and basic shutter-priority exposure, it was cranking out colors that, to quote my friend, “are better than reality”. With the camera set to color mode “vivid”, and the saturation at +3, the colors were almost too bright, and needed to be toned down slightly in Photoshop. However, at +2, everything looks great and the colors are not too bright.
Menu Options:
Compared to my D100, it is overloaded with menus. I haven't had much time to root through them, but right away, the options to save 4 different banks of settings and switch between them quickly is invaluable. In addition, the improved options for things such as time lapse photography is excellent. Also, the addition of a “my menu” is extremely helpful- it allows quick access to the options that you need to change quickly and often. I will report more on this as I work through the manual and experiment with settings. The only things I have changed from default is the color mode to “vivid”, the Active-D lighting to “normal” and the saturation to +2 or +3, depending how the shot looks. This leads to me to the LCD.
LCD Monitor:
The LCD monitor is big and beautiful. I have seen discussion on the web about the exact specs, but I forget them now. The only things I care about is that it is incredibly sharp, has a wonderful viewing angle and reproduces colors exactly as my calibrated monitor does. The sharpness of the LCD allows me to quickly check focus and exposure without zooming in.
The capabilities of the back screen have been dramatically expanded since the D100. It can throw up a improved version of the top screen, which is wonderful for tripod use when you dont need to get up on your tiptoes to see the exposure information. The info screen for playback is incredibly comprehensive as well.

That is all for now- I will update more later.