Switching from D300 to D700?

<p>Hello folks,<br>

I am currently contemplating on switching from the D300 to the D700 to obtain full frame and use primes to their fullest so here are my questions.<br>

I have read in the past that for some reason which hasn't sunk in yet that the D300 is better for landscape than the D700, is it?</p>

<ul>

<li>I currently have a 35mm f/2 AI, 12-24mm f/4 DX, 50mm f/1.4, 80-200mm 3.5-5.6 DX and a 28-80mm f/3.5-4.6 and am planning on selling the DX lenses and D300 to soften the purchase of the D700.</li>

</ul>

<p>Landscape is mostly what I shoot although since there is going to be an addition to the family by the end of the year, I will also start taking pix of "junior" by the end of the year.<br>

So, should I keep the D300 and buy better glass or switch to the D700 and also buy a 27-70mm f/2.8 and kep the primes that I have?<br>

Thanks to you all for the help!</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Hello folks,<br /> I am currently contemplating on switching from the D300 to the D700 to obtain full frame and use primes to their fullest so here are my questions.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>What is it that you are not happy with of the d300 in your landscapes? I don't see any reason to switch from d300 to d700 in your situation. </p>

<p> </p>

Pascal, I switched for the same reason and haven't looked back. All is now FX and I'm back to 'normal' with my old

lenses as well. Personally, even if I could afford DX gear, I would not have both. In my view the landscapes will be

better in FX especially with 24 mm wide angle lens

<p>Unless you are shooting your landscape shots at high ISO, you won't see a difference.</p>

<p>I'm presuming Pascal isn't shooting his landscape @ ISO 1600 without a tripod with his d300...</p>

<p>I think you are better off upgrading your lens inventory, especially if there may be a smaller version of the D700 in a year or so. I would spend money on glass and a solid tripod system, if you don't already have that. I don't understand the "full-frame" dance that some people do. The 300 makes it less compelling, to me, assuming you employ the right lenses.</p>

<p>Based on your current lens inventory, I would stay with your D300. Because you have a new family member on the way I'd invest in the SB-900 if you don't have it already. </p>

<p>+1. Good lenses for FX are expensive, and there's no advantage to a D700 without them. Have a look at the next post after yours. The poster has put himself in exactly that position. You'd also lose the 'reach' with your 80-200 zoom. The flash is a great idea for baby pics (and lots of others). You could get pretty good with one between now and junior's arrival date.</p>

<p>I'd upgrade some lenses, or indeed the flash, before switching bodies. The 28-80 as standard lens on a D700 body, to me, makes no sense. Running 4 spare tires under your Ferrari...<br>

The reason why the D300 may be called better for landscape is that DX has a seemingly deeper depth of field compared to FX, since you're shooting with wider angles. So f/8 on DX would resemble f/11 on FX. Or so the story goes, I think there is some merit in it but to call it a landscape advantage for DX goes a bit too far.<br>

Anyway, like previous posters stated, for landscapes, the D700 does not bring all that much I think. Essentially, from the topic start, I read you'd make the switch to have 2 primes work better, and for that loose the 12-24 (the other DX lens does not ring a bell for me, sorry).... replacing that with a good counterpart will be costly.</p>

<p>If you don't print above 11 x 14, you should stick with what you have imho.</p>

<p>Unless you shoot a LOT of very low light stuff at high ISO.</p>

<p><em>Good lenses for FX are expensive</em></p>

<p>On the contrary, FX works better with most older high-quality lenses (apart from the wide angles) than DX since the image circle is a match to what the lenses were designed for. The only glitch is with the angle of incidence issue that affects wide angles <28mm. You can get quite cheap manual focus and autofocus primes that give excellent results on the D700.</p>

<p>In addition, FX works great for people pics (that was mentioned as an application in addition to landscape).</p>

<p>And if you want to have lenses for the future, it makes sense to go with FX as Nikon is the only one making these very moderate pixel count FX cameras (12MP); everyone else is >20MP for full-frame. It can't take long for Nikon to follow; in fact when the D3 was introduced in 2007, most people were stunned that Nikon would go for such a low resolution given the potential of the lenses that cover this image size. It turns out the cameras are quite good though, but far from ideal for landscape. But I'd prepare my lenses for the day that Nikon actually makes a camera for landscape photographers.</p>

<p>But if budget is a major consideration rather than availability of high quality lenses (which I think greatly favours FX) then stay with DX; it works fine today and you can get the job done. There are some nice wide-range zooms that are great for traveling light, such as the 16-85 DX. This is one area where DX is very nice; if you're going to shoot at small apertures anyway, you can get a very compact zoom setup (provided that you're happy with the quality and aperture range available).</p>

<p>I've been using a D300 for the past two years and had the same question. I am an outdoor shooter, and shoot a lot at night too. I borrowed a D700 for a couple of weekends to try it. I just didn't see a big enough improvement to justify the expense. I showed some shots I took with D700, D300, and D80 to a magazine editor that I submit shots to and he didn't see any difference. I then looked at the cost of changing lenses over to FX and decided that since I certainly won't sell any more shots or get more money for them if I did change, that I would keep what I have and put the money on something that mattered more. I've been in photography for a couple of decades now and have come to the conclusion that a camera generally gives the smallest improvement in quality. I would recommend that you upgrade lenses, tripod/head, and maybe computer & software. The modern zooms will outperform your current lenses.<br>

Kent in SD</p>

<p>Nothing wrong with that D300. I have both the D300 and the D700 and while I think the D700 has the advantage for high-iso work, for landscapes I don't see any real advantage to the full-frame over the D300. I still use my D300 all the time and in fact it would be great if Nikon would make a fully professional grade D300 (full viewfinder for one thing) as a pro crop-sensor would be really great for hard-core telephoto (birding, wildlife, etc.). So probably unless you just have money to burn, spend on lenses that are compatible with both formats for when you eventually do get serious about ADDING the full-frame body. Notice I did not say UPGRADE to the full-frame; it's just that the D300 is a valid and useful tool and should be considered as such.</p>

<p>Some of my favorite landscape shots were taken with the D300. Just last week I took the boat out for architecture shooting in Padre Isles and I used the D300 with the 24-70. Razor-sharp, beautiful images were the result and the D700 stayed in the bag the whole time.</p>

<p>Lenses lenses lenses! Upgrade your lenses. D700 gets you nothing over D300 except for two things: Speed when shooting 14 bit RAW files. And high ISO speed. Other than that, no more crop factor is nice if you have a lot of FX lenses.<br>

What you lose by going from D300 to D700 is much more. You lose your 100 percent viewfinder, D700 has a terrible 90% viewfinder, so unless you post-process all your photos, you'll be seeing things poking into the frame that simply weren't there when you took the photo, this drove me nuts. You lose handling, the D700 is chunkier. If you have really big hands, this might be a plus. You gain weight with the D700. You lose a little bit of battery life with the D700. <br>

Overall you don't get better image quality with the D700, in fact, at ISO 200, I much prefer the D300, which is sharper overall. D700 has a strong anti-alias filter and I found all images I shot with it at ISO 200 needed an unsharp mask or noise added. <br>

I'm probably the only one on this forum who went from D300 to D700 to D300 again. I am waiting with anticipation to see how Nikon will improve the D700, which was a good try at an affordable full frame SLR. But Canon has them beat handily with the 5D MKII and Nikon knows it.</p>

<p>But Dave,</p>

<p>The chief impetus behind your "downgrade" as I recall was economic more than displeasure? Wasn't that the case?</p>

<p>bottom line here is you dont really have the lenses to go FF. i'd get those first before switching bodies. it might make sense just to upgrade your DX lens lineup. unless you have the $$ to go for a d3x you wont see much of an IQ difference, except at high ISOs.</p>

<p>Don't step up to full frame with the D700, or D3, for that matter. Neither is a good value. I would start upgrading your lenses in preparation to go full frame but wait a year or so for the next Nikon full frame which should have the specs and the value to match the Canon 5D/5DII.</p>

<p>For landscapes full frame is the only way to go, but you would have to replace the 12-24 first.</p>

<p>Peter, yes, I went for the $599 D200 Best Buy deal, and thought to save money and sell of the D700. However, the D200 was such a disappointment from both the D300 and D700, that I later sold it for a small profit (though I had more than 2500 clicks on the body when I sold it) and bought the D300 again. With hindsight I should have kept the D700, but the D300 is as much as I'll ever need. I rarely need more than ISO 1600 anyway. Now I have the Nikon 10-24mm, 16-85mm VR, 70-300mm ED, 55-200mm VR, and 35mm f1.8 AF-S in my bag, and need no other lenses for it. Until I can get a 24mp digital body in the form of a D300, I'll stick with what I have.</p>

<p>I agree with Dave that the D200 was a disappointment. I get very frustrated when I look back at my D200 images. They're just not sharp compared to shots from the D700. Maybe my 17-55 mm lens was a clunker, I'm not sure, but I consider most of my D200 portfolio to be unusable for anything more demanding than a 4x6 print. What a turkey!</p>

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<p>If you don't print above 11 x 14, you should stick with what you have imho.</p>

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<p>With a 12mp camera with good lenses and a tripod, 16x20 and 16x24 are easily obtainable.<br>

Gets a little costly with the prints but is worth it.<br>

Invest in good lens.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>The main problem with using the D300 or any other DX-format DSLR for landscape photography is the lack of good wide angles. I haven't tested 3rd-party lenses, but Nikon DX lenses such as the 10-24, 12-24, and 17-55 are all weak on their respective wide end. There are much better selections of good wide-angle lenses for FX, including the excellent 24mm/f3.5 PC-E.</p>

<p>However, the D700 is now over 2 years old. IMO it is not a good idea to buy it so late in its production cycle, but that topic has already been discussed many times. If you need more explanation, it is best to check the archives. E.g., since you have a baby on the way, having the ability to capture some occasional video should be a major plus.</p>

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<p>to obtain full frame and use primes to their fullest</p>

</blockquote>

<p>a film SLR is perfect for this. If you want manual focus, get an FM or FM2n. If you want autofocus, get an F100 or F5. Since you think of full frame and primes maybe you would add a prime 20mm</p>

<p>Perhaps asking to use manual focus lenses would be too hard to do, while both cameras have such a wondeful AF system.</p>

<p>If you have to focus manually, e.g. with Zeiss lenses or macro work, or in low lighting, the D700 has much larger and brighter viewfinder, thanks to large sensor and mirror. Even if it only shows less than the 100% picture area, is simply far superior to the D300S viewfinder, even if it has the full 100% coverage.</p>

<p>Once you start using D700, it will be hard to go back to DX format, except for the DX crop afforder extended reach of less expensive lenses. Viewing through viewfinder, framing, focusing, is all much better in the D700, and that accounts for most of the time you spend behind the viewfinder.</p>

<p>Rent D700 and use it along with D300, and you will know for sure if is worth the extra $$$ for you. </p>

<p>I own a "lowly" Nikon D80, plus scads of AI/AIS primes from the manual focus days. Well, long story made short, a friend came by today, dropped off his D700/24-70 combo, and asked me to test my primes on his camera. I'm sorry to report, that while I've gotten some very good high ISO images with the 50 mm f 1.4, my initial feeling, and this is subjective, is that it isn't worth the hassle. I've also tried both my 28-105 and 35-135 AF lenses. And while the images are very good, they don't compare and integrate to the camera as well as his 24-70 lens. Even though I've had the camera only an afternoon, my initial observation is that if you buy this body, it deserves the new lenses with the best coatings - expensive and heavy! </p>

<p> </p>

<p>Gene, if you are testing manual-focus AI/AI-S lenses on the D700, your test methodology is critical. You need to set the whole thing on a sturdy trypod and use live view, tripod mode to carefully tune your focus to get the most out of those lenses. Otherwise, at least you need to get a 3rd-party split-screen focusing screen to assist your manual focusing. If not, a little bit of focusing error will wipe out all sharpness from those lenses (including all Zeiss ZF lenses).</p>

<p>I have no doubt that some older lenses will work well with modern FX DSLRs and some don't. For me, it is hard to make a generalization. You need to carefully evaluate each lens individually.</p>

<p>I have read many times that once you use FX, you won't like DX any more as Frank points out. However, that has not been my experience. I have owned a D700 since its early days and have tested every FX model Nikon has introduced. To date, I continue to shoot both FX and DX on a regular basis. In fact I use DX more often than FX.</p>