Sam Bennett Online Buy and Sell: On
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I've owned both and have recently gone over to the other side buying my first D700 and a 24-70/2.8. I have another D700 coming in next week and am on the list for the 70-200mm f/2.8 VR's replacement, whenever that is.
Image quality wise they're quite close. The 5D is a tad bit sharper at the pixel level, but not really anything you'd notice in a print. The D700 has better noise-handling, but not to the degree that a lot of rabid Nikonians would want you to believe.
Low-light focusing on the D700 is great, and better than the 5D's. The focusing system in general is much more mature and has a level of customizability on par with the Mark III system, and better in some regards. However, the Multicam 3500 system's cross-type sensors are grouped in the center, so you'll hit the same problem you see with the 5D with the AF points on the outside edges. So, you have really excellent performance around the center and the top-center and bottom-center points, so if you do a lot of AI Servo AF there (which I do), then it's significantly better AF-wise.
Other things... feels tougher, but hard to know. Has AF-point linked Spot Metering, the built in flash Commander Mode is really excellent - beyond being able to control ratios as you can with the ST-E2 or a master flash, you can even adjust the power manually for each group from the camera, which is fantastic and seems to work well. The camera generally is much more responsive in terms of shutter lag and mirror blackout - it feels like shooting with a 1 Series. The CF subsystem screams - you never have to wait for the camera to stop doing anything.
In my mind, there's no contest - the D700 is flat-out a better camera. The 5D Mark II should be very nice, especially if you need resolution, but Nikon really has a great "system" going on here so if you can deal with their rather limited lens line-up, it definitely bears consideration.
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