D3 vs D300 vs Money

[Vladimir Eugene]

Ok, I'm looking to buy a camera. I was leaning towards the Nikons because of the great feedback i've read about the Zeiss ZF's. I'm assuming they work with the Nikon cams. What I'm looking for is the 3200 price difference worth it. Is there something else that competes at a lower price point? I've never owned a camera before, so forgive my novice post.

Vladimir Eugene

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Unless you're a professiona, and I mean, a true professional that makes a living out of taking photos every day of his life, the D 300 is more camera than you'll probably ever need. Heck, I would even buy a second hand D 200 and be happy with it. My D 200 is awesome, and I still use it more than my D 300, then again, I use the D 100 more than both with only a 5mp sensor, so go figure.

 

[Vladimir Eugene]

thanks Rudi,

 

[Chuck T.]

The D3 has a true 35mm format sensor... your lens would work 1:1

 

[Babu Kantamneni]

you are back!

 

[redman]

D3 is full weather sealed, d300 is partially sealed.
D3 has 2 CF memory card slots
D3 can shoot 14 bit at 9 fps, but d300 shoots 12 bit at 8fps with optional battery pack, but once you move to 14 bit it goes down to 2.5fps.
D3 is full frame, heavier, much larger.
D300 has built in flash and sensor cleaning, D3 has neither.
D3 has mic recording option.
D3 has bigger brighter viewfinder.
Because the D3 has a full frame sensor with much larger photosites, its iso performance really separates the 2.
Heres a link you should check out.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d3/vs-d300.htm

 

[Jason Murphy]

The D3 is a monster; it's a phenomenal camera. As redman points out, the full frame sensor with larger photosites means that the low light performance of the D3 is pretty much better than anything else out there.

Also, the high frame rate is a really excellent feature. In fact, I have a friend who's shooting part of a film on the D3, using a mixture of frame doubling and optical flow work in Shake to fill in the missing frames. Makes for a fascinating look; really compelling and sharp as a tack, even in ridiculously low light.

All that said, if you don't generally need to shoot things at ISO 6400, or if you don't need 9 FPS on your DSLR, the D300 is probably going to work just as well for you, and be a hell of a lot cheaper to boot. If money were not factored into the decision, I'd take the D3 any day of the week. But since it pretty much always is a factor, I'd be quite happy with the D300.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Canon's replacement for the 5D (Mark II) is rumored to be 16MP, 14-bit, Digic III, Auto-Sensor-Cleaning, Weather Sealed, ISO 12800, 1 2/3 stop sensitivity improvement, Live View LCD, etc. Probably about $3,000? If Canon would sell it closer to $2,000 or $2,500 that would be a lot better, IMO.

D3 takes amazing pics.