Beginner Should I upgrade my body

Darkstar_Surfer said:
I picked up a second hand canon ef-s 55-250 f4-5.6 at the weekend and managed to take it out for a test to my son's evening football practice. I definetly need some practice with this lens as very few of my pictures worked. Poor light did not help but I should be able to do better. I get some good close ups but almost all action was blurred. Will have a look through my exif data to see if there was a trend.
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I think a key thing at this moment is your gear is kinda out of scope in terms of what you want to shoot. It's all cheap stuff which is actually fine for making great images, but the combo of ISO performance on the Body (I had one way back) and slow lenses is going to be a challenges. I echo all the good advice around going out and shooting and learning your basics of exposure and composition. You will see your progression with the gear you have. At the same time you can discover what you like to shoot. I pretty much only ever shoot wildlife and street/architecture, but I never knew I'd end up that way when I started. So I buy gear that reflects that interest. Buying stuff is interesting and I've bought and sold a shed full, but at the end of the day it's very satisfying having just the gear you need to bring your interests to life. You actually don't need much. The 350 is a decent body and actually I had my most fun with one using it with a classic MF Zeiss 35mm and adapter. The way better ISO performance of a modern body is a help with slower lenses. In terms of fast lenses you really need to spend for the 1.4-1.8 kinda stuff in prime form to extract the very best. For me I'd likely buy a 35mm 2.0 and just hit the streets. But your interests may be different. The good about having a clear upgrade path based on interest/need/budget is you get value from a lens like that today but it'll stay the distance longer term too.
 
Before buying another body you really need to learn about the basics re iso,shutter speeds etc, this is not to sound rude but the problems you have ie low light and shutter speed will carry over to even the best body and lead to more frustration, as others have said action shots need a fast shutter speed and if you cant attain that then you are on a hiding to nothing even bumping the iso in poor light will render images to look less sharper, as they say its all about the light, there are better improved bodies out there which can be got quite reasonably second hand which have better performance tha 350 but the premise that they will improve your photography is only dependent on you learning what is required to produce the shot you are after, I'm saying this having a 6D and 1D3 and and trying to photograph birds in flight is taking me ages to get even an odd one right and I've been into photography for years, its all about learning and practice
 
My first digital camera was the 350D and I used that for over 5 years until I felt I had finally outgrown it so I rather seriously doubt that the camera is holding you back, but rather you believe that a better camera will somehow magically produce better shots.

It won't!

YOU produce the shots, the camera is, or should be, merely a tool.

My advice for lenses though is the 50mm F1.8 which is the best value lens Canon make and is super sharp from f2.8 onwards.

Also consider the 28-135mm IS USM lens which I have and is also a cracker walkabout lens and can be obtained S/H at a reasonable price.

And I have used the 350D often at 1600 ISO and used Neat Image to reduce the noise and it works perfectly well.

And don't forget that if you get more pixels you will also have to upgrade your computer if you have a slower version.

With the 350D I could quite happily use a Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM to edit my photos in a simple editing program (Serif Photo Plus 7) with no worries about the speed of the computer but with my Canon 1Ds MkII and its 18 Megapixel images producing a TIFF file of 97 Mb I now need an i7 and a 500MB SSD drive with 16 GB of RAM as a necessity!

It really isn't just about the camera!
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Are we allowed to ask for advice on cameras on ebay. There is an EOS700D new for £280.
 
remember the adage that if it sounds too good to be true it probably is - you might be better with a dealer like MPB, Camech, Ffords, LCE etc .. they are slightly more expensive but on the other hand you know you won't get ripped off
 
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