The D700's ,"A measly two stops," better high-ISO performance can mean the difference between GETTING SHOTS that are crisp and clear, and getting adequately exposed but motion-blurred shots. Two stops better performance means your 400 watt-second lights are more like 1600-watt seconds. Two stops better performance is not measly, it is a HUGE difference: it turns an f/5.6 lens into the functional equivalent of an f/2.8 lens, and it turns an f/2.8 lens into the equivalent of an f/1.4 lens. Two stops better means that instead of f/2.8 at 1/500 second, inadequate for minor league baseball at night under the lights with a D300 will yield f/2.8 at 1/2000--fast enough of a shutter speed to adequately stop most baseball action, to keep the ball round-looking, and not the elongated, 6-inch-long "blob" it is at 1/500 second when coming off the bat. I seriously do not understand itznfb's repeated defending and elevating of the D300 over the D700, except that his signature prominently displays and proclaims he's a D300 owner. The two bodies are not even comparable--one's a full-frame, the other's a crop-body.They are different animals, entirely. Neither is intrinsically better than the other; BOTH have stronger points and weaker areas. For some gigs, the D700 would be vastly preferrable, on others, the D300 would win out.
The D700 also has about a 2.3x larger capture area than a D300 has, meaning a MUCH, much larger area one can crop from, and also makes longer lenses like our 300/2.8 more-useful indoors for volleyball,basketball court far-end from other baseline, sideline football,etc,etc. Many,many times the 50% field of view reduction of a 1.5x body limits the usefulness of high-speed lenses like 70-200/2.8 and 300/2.8 when you are shooting indoors....cropping off the field of view of a 70mm setting and making it into that of a 105mm lens is NOT helpful indoors, or even outdoors on smaller field events like high jump, pole vault,etc.
Here's noted Nikon expert Thom Hogan's take on the D700, mostly vis a vis the D300, but also vis a vis the Nikon D3. Just a few excerpts.
Nikon D700 Review by Thom Hogan
"the AF and imaging capabilities of the D700 are the same as the D3."
"The D700 includes an internal flash ala the D300, as well. So one way to think about the D700 is to think of it as a full-frame D300."
"The imaging chain is exactly that of the D3: same sensor, same microlenses, same digitizing circuit, same processing. Likewise, the D700 seems to have the autofocus processing speed of the D3 (most visible in Auto Area AF), though it does seem to have a slight lag in acquisition I don't always see in my D3 (could be slight changes to AF algorithms)."
"That pretty much wraps the big picture up: D300 body, D3 image quality."
"here's the way I see it: the D3 is squarely targeted at the photo journalist and sports shooter who needs absolute performance, the D700 is more targeted to the serious amateur and pro backup market. If I were shooting all day for a newspaper, that second slot and the voice annotation alone would be the clincher for the D3. If I were shooting sports, the faster frame rates make the D3 the choice (yes, you can get close with the D700 and MB-D10 grip, but you end up with a larger combination that isn't quite as robust)."
"On the D300, the new CAM3500 sensor covers a very large portion of the frame, which means that the system is very good at following subject motion and managing highly off-center autofocus. On the D700, the same sensor covers a smaller portion of the frame, meaning that autofocus capabilities are restricted to a smaller portion of the frame. For some subjects, this is a problem, for others it usually isn't (hint: subjects with skin tones fare better outside the autofocus sensing area with Auto Area AF than others).Coupled with the scene recognition that is being done by the metering CCD in the viewfinder, the new focus system is sometimes so uncanny in 51 point 3D or Auto Area focus mode that it boggles the mind. This happens most often when there are faces or other skin tone in the area covered by the autofocus sensors. As it turns out, while various skin tones can look fairly different to us humans, to an RGB metering system they all are in the same narrow range and thus easily detectable."
"White balance, curiously, seems better on the D700 than on the D300, especially in mixed lighting. The direct Kelvin settings once again didn't match my Minolta Color Meter and my Imatest measurements, but they're closer than the D300 was"
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