No sleep and D300

[stoop]

Hi! First time for me to enter any of the camera forums (at birdforum or anywhere) and I don't want to wear the wrong football colours into a new club asking questions but I can't sleep and am thinking about selling the farm and getting a Nikon D300 and either a AF-S Nikkor ED 300mm F4(IF) or a AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor ED 70-300mm F4.5-5.6G(IF).
The D300 is available here on the 23rd of this month and I'm beginning to sweat.
If anyone has experience with either of these lenses I'd be grateful to hear...
I have never used a Nikon camera but I have been enjoying trying to photo birds in flight for 20 years and just want a set-up that wont leave me 'wanting', for, I hope some years.

My current camera is not Nikon and is inconsistant with AF and I'm looking for something that will let me concentrate on finding and photoing birds.
I don't blame any camera for my failure to get good photos but at the moment I feel I'm driving a car and I can't trust how the brakes are going to respond. 3 out of at 10 times, ok, but I don't like wondering what its going to do after waiting for 4 hours for an rare shot.
Thanks for any replies. Happy birding!

[Duke Leto]

Hiya, there are loads of threads on the BF relating to lenses such as the one 2 below this one entitled "which lens"
happy reading

[DonFrambach]

I have the 70-300 VR zoom. It is a great lens for shooting pictures of my kids' sporting events. It is excellent hand held. I found it too short for the kind of birding I do. I do not have the 300mm lens you mentioned but seriously considered that plus a teleconverter (which I understand work well together note the TC and the zoom lens do not work well together). I got a little crazy and bought a used 500mm f4 manual focus nikon lens and that has worked well for me.

I did find that the larger lens required a larger tripod so down the slippery slope I went.

Good luck with your decision. Don