what to buy a nikon d300s or nikon d7000?

[lil dvl]

what to buy a nikon d300s or nikon d7000?

so i currently use a nikon d40x with kit lenses and sigma 10-20. the camera is getting really old its probably shot a million or more pics so its time to upgrade (lensses aswell). i shoot wildlife sport and landscape. So i want something fast and good quality at a reasonable price. i was looking at the d300s for a while and now they have produced the 7000 im not to sure which way to go!

the only thing that looks better on the 300s is the af sensor 51points compared to 39, and it shoots up to 8fps compared to 6. will this make a huge difference between the 2 cameras?

Any help is fantastic i am self tort so i dont understand alot of camera talk so keep it in simple terms

 

[ghache]

From the reviews ive seen, the usage i do with my camera and the price difference, i would be tempted to get the d7000....

The d7000 has some really interesting feature. It feels alot more heavy duty than the regular plastic bodys but is smaller than regulars magnesium bodys, autofocus has a little bit less points and cross points but 39/9 is still really good(considering that i only have 112 on my d90 and so far it works really well for me. The meetering is also using twice as much pixels than the d300s

I would get the d7000 over the d300s for the only reason that most of my shoot are done in studio and location shoot and mostly use low iso settings. The extra megapixels would be really nice for cropping and the 250th sec over the 1/200 on my d90 would be really nice for location shoot.

2 memory card slot? hell yeah.

 

[Neil S.]

nikon d7000 is better

In many ways yes...

The D300s is built better though I think, and for some people this counts for a lot.

Also the D7000 is newer which gives it the advantage of having the latest and greatest.

 

[molsen]

Considering you shoot wildlife and sports, the D300s will be better suited for that. It's AF is top-notch and is AMAZING in action situations. The D7000 is a nice camera, but there's still no verdict on its AF module, and there's no way it will outperform the D300's, although it'll be close.

That being said, the D7000 will be a little more user-friendly for someone coming from a D40x.

Also, please please PLEASE consider upgrading your glass FIRST. That will make a much bigger difference in your photos than a new body will.

 

[ghache]

If you shoot wild life and sports the 300s has as SMALL advantage over the d7000

 

[tirediron]

The main advantage of the D300s is build quality. Magnesium body, weather sealing - all things necessary for outdoor work.

 

[Shane Anderson]

Hmmmm...saw a D300s for $1399 in Toronto yesterday...

 

[molsen]

Personally, I'd get a used D300 (unless you need the half-ass video feature) and use the money you saved to get better glass, especially a better zoom like the Nikon 70-200 f/2.8

 

[KmH]

Personally, I'd get a used D300 (unless you need the half-ass video feature) and use the money you saved to get better glass, especially a better zoom like the Nikon 70-200 f/2.8

Word!

 

[djacobox372]

The main advantage of the D300s is build quality. Magnesium body, weather sealing - all things necessary for outdoor work.

Surprisingly the d7000 also has a Magnesium body, not sure about the weather sealing.

 

[molsen]

The main advantage of the D300s is build quality. Magnesium body, weather sealing - all things necessary for outdoor work.

Surprisingly the d7000 also has a Magnesium body, not sure about the weather sealing.

Not the entire body, just the top and back covers... not too much to write home about when compared to the D300. D7000 has weather sealing also, but I'm not sure to what extent

 

[kundalini]

Word!

Up!

 

[MrLogic]

Keep in mind that the D7000 frame buffer only holds 10-12 frames.

scubajunkie says:

Keep in mind that while the frame buffer on the D90 will hold six frames, the camera does not wait until the buffer is full to start writing out images. Once that first image is in the buffer, the camera starts writing it out to the SD card. By the time that sixth frame has hit the buffer, two or more of the prior frames have been written out, leaving space for more frames. So you can shoot nine or ten frames @ 4.5fps before the buffer fills and there is a slow down if you have a fast SD card. It's not just the frame buffer that is the limiting factor, it is the write speed of the card, and the max write speed of the camera, as well. Use a cheap card with a slow write speed and you may very well hit the wall after six frames instead of nine.

On to the D7000. From Scott Rinckenberger Chase Jarvis site:

Just shot a 10 frame burst at 6FPS with 14bit RAW and Large Fine Jpeg turned on. 11 frame burst with 12bit RAW and no Jpegs... It stops motor driving once I hit that 10-12 frame limit and starts to write. The motoring after that point is intermittent until the files have been written to the card.​

...which is a bit disappointing. Note that 14-bit RAW+jpg stopped just one frame shy of what 12-bit RAW (only) hit. One would expect 12-bit RAW (only) to go a bit further as 14-bit RAW plus a jpg should take up quite a bit more space. This leads me to believe that this may be artificially limited in the firmware rather than in buffer capacity. Keep in mind that we don't know what kind of SD cards they were using and that they had a pre-production camera. Until someone actually tests a production model, we won't know for sure.

stolen from: Flickr: Discussing Frame buffer in NIKON D7000 CLUB

 

[orb9220]

"i shoot wildlife sport and landscape"

If I made that statement then would know I answered my own question.
Being out in the weather banging around all the time. And D300 having a more robust faster AF and FPS would pretty much cinch the deal for me. Don't get me wrong I am sure I could find a item or two that the D7000 has that would be nice. But at the end of the day would feel better knowing I had a proven design that stands the test of the outdoors and such.
.

 

[molsen]

Exactly. Several gently used D300's can be had for ~$900 on Ebay right now. Take that $300 you saved and put it toward a fast, sharp zoom