[ianjmc]

Hi all, I'm a new member here so firstly hello to everyone.

I've got a question that I'm hoping some of the experienced folks on here can help me with.

But first a little background.... I bought my first SLR (a minolta 35mm) about 10 years ago. I didn't use it a great deal so it spent most of it's time gathering dust. Then when Sony started producing it's own SLRs on the back of the Minolta takeover I thought I'd put my old lenses to some use and immediately bought an a100.

I quickly got in to it and realised that the old lenses weren't that great so started replacing them with new ones to the point that I've now got the Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro, Sigma 10-20mm wideangle, Sigma 27-70mm f/2.8 and the Sigma 50-500mm. Likewise I upgraded the camera to the a700.

After spending a few years snapping everything in sight I've developed a real passion for wildlife photography. This in turn led me to a desire for a better telephoto lens, although the Sigma 50-500 does a very good job for the price I find that I almost always work at the 500mm end and I’m finding that f/6.3 simply isn’t fast enough for wildlife photos in anything but very bright light conditions.

So after all that waffle, here comes the point :-)

I want to focus my equipment towards wildlife photography, therefore I'm looking at the big primes such as a 300mm f/2.8 and 500mm f/4. After a look around on the web it seems that this is not one of Sony's strengths. Sony themselves don't seem to go above 300mm and the prices are much more than the comparable Canon or Nikon offerings.

So I’ve now resigned myself to having to switch manufacturers to either Canon or Nikon.

I was originally looking at the Canon EOS 5d mkII but I’m a little worried about the relatively low burst rate of 3.9 fps. I then saw Canon advertising the upcoming EOS 7d with a claimed 8fps burst, but on a cropped sensor. Unfortunately I can’t afford to get the “best of both worlds” 1ds MkIII so I’m going to have to make a compromise.

I’m not decided on Canon or Nikon yet but the question I have seems to apply to both - in your opinion what is more important for wildlife shooting? Full Frame or Burst Rate?

My current leaning is towards full frame, Quality over quantity - I might miss some moments by taking less shots in a sequence but the ones I get will be of higher quality. But I'm very undecided.

Any advice/comments greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.
Ian