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Made the switch to Nikon
I recently made the switch to Nikon, coming from a Sony A57 using mainly Sigma HSM lenses.
For starters I bought a Nikon D80 for 100.00 I bought a Sigma HSM 30MM F1.4 but I was looking for a lower end full frame, good in low light (low noise) and good in daylight. I was looking at the D700 is this a full frame?
Some of my Sony pics.
Out doors Sony A57 with Sigma 10MM HSM lens
For starters I bought a Nikon D80 for 100.00 I bought a Sigma HSM 30MM F1.4 but I was looking for a lower end full frame, good in low light (low noise) and good in daylight. I was looking at the D700 is this a full frame?
Some of my Sony pics.
Out doors Sony A57 with Sigma 10MM HSM lens
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Yes, the Nikon D700 is indeed an "FX" body. ("FX" is the Nikon specific term for a full-frame body; "DX" is the term for a Nikon crop 1.5x/APS-C body.)
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I am looking forward to upgrading to D750 in a year or so.
Good luck.
Phil
"You don't take a photograph, you make it." ~Ansel Adams
Phil
The D700 is a great camera but I'm not sure it's what I'd go with, though there's no clear winner either. The other option is the D7100 and it's not full frame I'll lay out the pros/cons for you:
First is price.
Body only D700 on KEH (a good site for used gear) is between 900-1,040 depending on the condition.
Refurbished D7100's are 700 on Adorama right now, and 1,000 new.
And then for the rest of the price I'd look at the lenses you want to buy, right now a lot of people are switching to full frame which has made for some great deals in DX (crop sensor) lenses.
Image quality:
in Bright light/low ISO:
Here the D7100 is clearly the better of the two with twice the resolution and noticeably wider dynamic range. This means in shots where the D700 has areas blown out to white the D7100 would still be able to get detail/color out of them. The one difference and this can go either way depending on what you plan to shoot is the depth of field will be wider on the crop sensor. So say you take the same exact shot, to have the same area in focus the D700 needs to be at F4 to have the same area as the D7100 at F2.8. But the flip side to this is if you do want the razor thin depth of field it's a mark against the D7100.
High ISO:
The D700 is the winner here, but the D7100 is surprisingly good for a crop camera especially when you look at the images at the same size. One caveat is at these higher ISO's if you have bright red or purple light the D700 doesn't like those at all and will blow out the image while the D7100 retains detail.
Action photography:
They have roughly the same AF system, but the coverage of the frame is different. The D7100's AF covers most of it while the D700 has them all in the center area. This is because it's the same AF sensor but since the D700 has a larger sensor it doesn't cover as much of it.
FPS:
Out of the box it's 5 FPS for the D700 and 6 FPS for the D7100, but you can buy the Nikon grip for the D700 and the D3 batteries and get it to shoot 8 FPS.
The buffer is a knock against the D7100 though, you have a shorter amount of time you can shoot at this top FPS rate before it slows down. On the D7100 basically you get a second or so of full speed and then it drops to ~2 FPS, while the D700 can handle about 20 shots. This is all for RAW shots, if you shoot JPEG it wouldn't be an issue.
Body/controls:
The D700 is bigger/heavier which could be preferable to you. The other thing is it has a lot of dedicated controls which is nice so everything has its own button or knob while the D7100 has buttons that have multiple functions. The D7100 is a lot like your current D80, just a little bigger and with a weather sealed body.
It all boils down to which of these factors matters more to you.
But if you're looking for the lowest cost full frame camera with low noise, etc, then that would be the D600/610.
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