Which would give me the best IQ

Crop sensor D300 with 300 mm F4

Or

Full frame sensor D3 with 300 mm F4 with 1.4 TC

A 400 mm is way to munch money for me

I have the D3 and really love the camera but wonder if I would be better served by a D300 & a D700

I do like the extra LCD and the dual cards on the D3 and the weight is not a problem

A am not a professional and have film cameras as back ups, so the D3 does serve my quite well

Just curious about the two cameras one with a TC and the other with out

Thank you

Dennis

I recently acquired a D3 and was going to keep my D300 for the extra reach the crop sensor gives you. I did some side-by-side comparisons and found the 5.1mp D3 crop image (upsized in CS3) to be pretty much equal, perhaps a bit better than the D300's 12mp image. I just sold my D300.

 

I believe you will find that your 300mm with or without your 1.4x on your D3 will give you pretty much equal image quality than the 300mm with the equivalent setup on the D300.

 

If you can get your hands on a D300, you can easily try your lens setup on both and compare for yourself. I suspect you will come to the same conclusion as I did.

If you don't need IS, the Canon 400mm f/5.6L has an excellent reputation and is actually a bit cheaper than the 300mm f/4 IS.

Opps, apologies - I mis-read the forum name...

 

It's a bummer that Nikon jumps directly from the reasonably priced 300mm f/4 directly into the stratosphere with anything longer...

How about a D3 with the 80-400 VR Nikkor? I use a D3 & D300 and usually take both bodies with a combination of lenses

for the job to save changing lenses which I try to keep to a minimum. Most common combination is D3 with 70-200 2.8

and D300 with 12-24 Nikkor. Or D300 with 18-200 Nikkor and D3 with another appropriate lens.

Thanks for your points Elliot. I am considering getting the D700 or D300 and your findings have made it much easier to make a decision.