[pkaliaf1]

Comparing D700 with K-7 is not fair ! (regarding price and format)
However, as I have both of them, my experience is that ergonomically D700 comes close to K-7, by customizing D700.
AF operation of D700 is far superior. But for situations where critical and fast AF is not required (and High ISO of course) K-7 and even better K-X do the job just fine and more easily (less weight and size)

[filorp]

i was trying d700+50f1.4 against k20+24f2... my conclusion is... k20 won the challenge (speed and acuracy) however d700+24-70f2.8 or 70-200f2.8 was just instant and put my k20 in the shame... everything happened at about 4-6EV... that's my opinion for contrary...

[tokyoso]

oh boy , 20K posts only 2 weeks. somewhere in between I think I read a rumour about pentax M4/3 enroachment...

[joele]

Canon 300mm f4 IS is an outstanding lens.

I got mine a year ago

Yeah I love it a friend has one, I bought the 70-200/4 IS first, I am saving for the 300/4 IS at the moment.

Seems to me Hoya is pricing gear higher in UK and Austraila inspite of not making gear in Japan anymore.

Yeah that annoyed me, they moved production to a cheaper country and then put the prices up.. The 15/4 costs over a thousand dollars here (US$0.90 = AUD$1) so thats insane, and the DA*55 I could buy or I could buy both the canon and nikon (AF-S) 50/1.4s and have money left over. (For canon I have bought the Sigmalux 50/1.4).

[pop4]

Over the last two weeks, I've had a chance to play around with a Nikon D300 + Nikkor 70-200mm F2.8 VR, and basing my comparison to my Pentax K-7 + Sigma 70-20mm F2.8 HSM II, overall, I'm actually not that impressed. Granted, I know the K-7 like the back of my hand while the D300 was pretty new to me, but here are my experiences.

First thing first, AF. A lot of people here bitch and moan about how Pentax AF sucks. Sure, this isn't a direct Nikon vs Pentax comparison, but rather a Nikkor vs Sigma comparison, but from my first-hand experience with the Nikkor 70-200mm F2.8 VR, it actually, and consistently, focuses slower and is less accurate than the Sigma 70-200mm. And this wasn't in bright environments, but in places where I was shooting at ISO 800 and 1600 at between F2.8 and F4.0. However, I did find that the AF accuracy of the Nikkor increased when I turned VR off. It was actually pretty cool too, to see the image jump around though the viewfinder as the VR element in the Nikkor did its thing. And while the D300 does have 51 AF points compared to the 11 of the K-7, I actually feel that sometimes, you can have too many AF points. I was in single focus point select mode, and it did take a bit more time to select the focus point that I wanted on the D300 as I had to press the buttons a few more times.

The auto WB wasn't too impressive, with most indoor situations being a bit warm, and outside in the shade, being a bit cool. There was no day and night gap between the ISO performance of the D300 and K-7 either. In fact, at high ISO, the K-7 images are actually a bit more noisy, but more detailed, whereas the D300 images had that smoother, but smudged look.

My biggest gripe was the button placement on the D300, specifically the ISO button. I tend to shoot Av mode, choosing the ISO manually (say for indoors, I'll chose 800 or 1600 and just leave it there). With my older K10D, and the K-7, once my hands are in the shooting position, left hand under the lens, right hand on camera, I don't have to move my hands much when in the process of actually shooting. Pretty much everything I need to change, with the exception of exposure mode and metering mode (both of which I don't tend to change anyway), can be done with minimal movement of the position of my hands. The D300? The ISO button is on the top left of the camera, next to the viewfinder, and everytime I wanted to change ISO, I had to move my left hand off the lens, and press the the ISO button with that hand, then rotate the e-dial with my right. I got sick of that pretty damn fast.

Playback wise, I also prefer the K-7. I can use the e-dials to zoom in/out and transition though the pictures, whereas on the D300, the zoom in/out is controlled by two separate buttons along the left of the back of the body, and to transition from picture to picture, I had to zoom out and then use the multi-selector.

While I must admit that I did have limited time with the D300, and there's probably a lot of customisation that can be done to the D300 to make it work that way I prefer, and also once you spend more time with a camera, you'll probably get used to it's little quirks, at the end of the day, in my experience, I actually prefer the K-7 + Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 HSM II combo compared to the D300 + 70-200mm F2.8 VR.

And to those who constantly complain about their Pentax, the grass isn't always greener on the other side.