How I shoot in BW with my nikon 70 - Cameras

depends on what you want to shoot.
for landscapes I recommend Nikon 10-24
for animals Nikon 70-300 VRII

A good portion of shots in my portfolio were created with this combo: Landscape Gallery Beautiful Pictures by Anton Gorlin

The D5000 does not have a focus motor in the body, relying on the lens to have one. The old 70-300mm G lens does not have a focus motor, relying on the camera to have one. Thus, this combination will not autofocus.
The newer 70-300mm AF-S G lens, as well as the even newer 70-300mm VR AF-S lens, do have the autofocus motor and thus will autofocus on the D5000.

So many people are browsing for the best D40 lens to take baseball picture i will give you some information about this topic i am not a professional photographer

if it's played on a full sized diamond you'll need 300mm if shooting from on the field/dugout. 200mm isn't long enough to shoot corner-to-corner. Realize though if it's not sunny at that time of day (i.e if it's overcast) you'll be shooting at 1600 to get needed shutter speeds at 5.6

IS is not necessary but USM is. THe 70-300 is the best choice for your needs as long as lighting is good.

hope this information will be help full for you

Having gone over a month with no response, I assume this is no longer a problem.

Try cleaning the contacts on the camera body and lens where they meet with a cotton swab lightly dampened with rubbing alcohol.

Wow, that's weird. Does it do it with the auto-focus switch on the body turned to manual? I shoot a D300 and know pretty much everything about it there is to know and the D700 is basically the same camera with a full frame sensor. The only things I know of that drop CH frame rate are shooting in 16-bit raw and it shouldn't kill it like that, using full-auto with tracking will also cause a lag in auto-focus but that still doesn't seem right here. If it only does it with the auto focus on then it may have trash on the AF screen in the camera and needs to be cleaned. Try setting the body switch to manual focus, remove the grip and shoot jpeg and see if it still happens. If it does, reset the menu settings and try again. If it still does it than you probably need to give it a trip to Nikon. If it quits than start putting things back one at a time until you figure out what is doing it.
Somebody told me that Nikon will clean the pro cameras for free once a year while under warranty, I haven't looked into it yet to make sure.

Set the ISO as high as it will go and the aperture as low as possible. That is as good as it gets without investing a lot of money in pro cameras and lenses that are needed to shoot action in low light. I have a D300 and a 70-200mm f2.8 lens that together cost almost $4000 and it can barely do it. How bad do you want pictures?

Yeah sorry, that's what i meant, Nikon.
Try to clean lens contacts on the camera with alcohol.

You CAN!!! shoot in b/w with a d40, the only thing is you can't shoot in auto mode it has to be manual , aperture priority, or shutter prioirity. Go into menu - shooting mode - optimize image. you'll find it in there.

Manual mode