Help on deciding: Nikon d300 or Nikon d700

Mike_E · Aug 11, 2010

Weddings are generally low light affairs in cramped spaces. You'd think that with all of those big old churches you'd have plenty of space but let one wedding planner and a mother of the bride loose in there and there will be so much stuff in the way that you will be scared to turn around.

What I'm trying to say is that if you are going to do weddings then you need a FF camera.

The crop factor makes it look like the lens is a 1.5 times the focal length but you still get the same compression (or wide angle distortion depending) regardless of the size of the sensor. In other words if you have to go to 24mm to get the shot because you are cramped for space you are still going to have facial distortion that will make somebody unhappy.

The D300 works pretty well in low light but not as well as the D700 and as I said you are going to run into some pretty dark venues. Enough said on that.

As to a 70/80-200mm A lot of the time in smaller venues that range is all but unusable on a crop body. It's just too long. Intimate facial expressions are nice -occasionally- but women want to see the clothes they've been dreaming about since they were little girls and have spent WAY too much money on. I rarely carry longer than a 135mm. (no I don't have a 700 -yet )

So, you might want to think about the D700, a 24/28mm f2.8 AFD (the 24 has more distortion but is enough wider that you get the "wide angle" feel), a 35mm f2.8 AFD (it's a shame that Nikon doesn't have a 42mm prime) for reception work, a 50mm f1.4 AFD for the times they want a nighttime candlelit ceremony and the 70/80-200 f2.8 for general use (I'd save my money on the VR thing if I were you, you really don't want to go below 1/30 anyway and good technique is a better bet). It's really no trouble to use the foot zoom with the short primes and if you always shoot a little wide the crop tool is your friend.