Hi guys,
thanks for the response, I've had a good look through the comments and a good look through the photos again.....
Might be a bit of a daft question here... but can a lens directly affect noise?
Example, If i have an 18-55 shooting at F3.5 at 35mm.
And I had for an example.. a DX Sigma 35mm F1.4 Art lens, shooting at F3.5...
I would expect the sigma to give a much sharper shot, much less chromatic aberration and less lens distortion for example..
Would the noise be the same on both of these? I would have guessed not as it's the same settings, the same sensor, the same aperture and shutter speed... So in theory the light and noise should be exactly the same?
Surely only sharpness would be different?
"if I can get a free body bought for me by my company, which Nikon should I get"
This is exactly that... I don't want to go to my company and say "you'll need a full frame camera costing you £1500, plus you'll need a £300 lens, oh but if you want wide angle shots you'll need to get a kit lens with it as well, oh and you want real close up product shots, you'll need to spend £300+ for a macro lens
I currently use my own camera and lenses, however the environment I work in is dusty so i'm forever cleaning my body and forever conscious about dust on the sensor etc....
The camera would live at work with probably an 18-55 kit lens... If for any reason other lenses are needed, I can bring my own lens in, instead of bringing my full camera bag in..
This gives work options to use my lenses if required, and like-wise, if I had the need to use this camera instead of mine, I've got an option to borrow it for a day or a weekend.
A new camera is not the answer for the 'issues' the op is having.
As mentioned above, this is purchasing a new camera for my work place... not to replace my own camera. For the work I personally do, I do portrait shots of my family and some macro work, my f2.8 Macro or my 35 and 85mm f1.8 are more than ample for this and noise isn't an issue as I generally shoot in natural light with iso of 100.
500-1000 but presumably a lens or two is needed as well.
I'm planning on a kit lens to keep at work all of the time for general use, and if I require anything extra i'll use my own personal lenses with works body.
And learning to use flash could be an idea too.
I'd previously done some test shots in that environment, and was able to achieve f5.6 and maintain a shutter speed of 100+ at iso 400 so I never brought a flash thinking this would be okay... With my test shots it seemed to perform better. I'm assuming this is because I didn't take into account black and blue suits and blue work uniforms. So i never thought I had the need to bring a camera.
You have the best sensor already so for low light your existing camera is as good as it gets for you.
i would take time to consider what you will be shooting and what you need. If you are getting poor pics at 400ISO its probably more to do with the lens and user than the camera. Jumping to a new camera will not improve things that much.
But I’m still surprised there’s an issue. ISO 400, f5.6, +2ev and I’m assuming a shutter speed around 1/125
In regards to these 3 quotes... I do believe some of this is down to user error... I know the 18-55 is only a kit lens but I did require the wide aperture. With the event it was in a showroom and I did want to get some of the background in focus and other people mingling etc.. hence using f5.6.
I do think my problem has perhaps been shooting in aperture priority mode.. I thought originally I would be best controlling this and letting the camera do the work for me... I believe what has happened is because of fluorescent lights dotted around I should have maybe used spot metering or center weighted metering to ensure exposure wasn't taking into account the lighting... Obviously shooting in full auto I would have been able to manually dial this in and increase exposure via shutter and ISO instead of bumping it up in lightroom.
I have also found that in Lightroom when I "auto expose" it is massively under exposing. So I am assuming this is the problem I've had.