Upgrade or not advice.

akcron

akcron

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Paul
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Hello all.
Just want to pick your brains for ideas, i am doing more action photos as of late
Sports,Racing and Paintball action that kind of thing and was thinking of moving to a slightly better camera.

I have had some trouble keeping my shooting speed up to take good action shots when it is dull say when in a wooded area even when boosting the ISO.

I was told that better FPS, better low light handling, and more focus points than my D40x had would help.

As i only can afford about £200.00 plus what i would get for my D40x and kit lens what would you advice on camera model if you think i need to get a better one? I would even consider going over to Cannon.

Or as i have small amount of money to spend would i be better selling my 18-55 and 55-200vr putting some money to and getting better glass?

Thank you for any and all advise you can give. :)
 
Not that well up on Nikon, but reckon its going to cost you more than 200 quid extra to get a big improvement, but that's only going on Canon prices

The newer camera do have better high ISO capability and more FPS, but a faster lens would also help, neither of thse come cheap i'm afraid

If it were me think I would go with the lens option, ready for when you buy a new body one day
 
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To be honest you're going to need to add a 1 to the front of that two hundred quid to get anything superior that won't frustrate you.
 
Probably a decent lens might be better... but if you are finding the d40x limiting, perhaps an upgrade to a used d200 or d90 - might be pushing the budget a bit though?

The lenses you have should be ok with them.


For lenses, hmm well you need faster so you'll be looking for f1.4 - f2.8 constant.

As to sports/racing/running through woods, not sure the best lens. Do you use a particular focal length a lot on your current lenses? If so perhaps look for a quicker lens in that range.

If you can cope with manual, may be a samyang 85mm f1.4 (around 250 ish ukp)

I can recommend the tokina 11-16 for wide shots and 105mm nikkor macro for macro/portrait shots - but both of these lenses are around 400ukp each.

You could try looking into m42 adapter (15ukp) and older lenses (5-100ukp) as a test for more length - Tair 300 mm is brill ;) all these lenses are on the links in the sig if you want to see the sort of shots I've managed.
 
akcron said:
Hello all.
Just want to pick your brains for ideas, i am doing more action photos as of late
Sports,Racing and Paintball action that kind of thing and was thinking of moving to a slightly better camera.

I have had some trouble keeping my shooting speed up to take good action shots when it is dull say when in a wooded area even when boosting the ISO.

I was told that better FPS, better low light handling, and more focus points than my D40x had would help.

As i only can afford about £200.00 plus what i would get for my D40x and kit lens what would you advice on camera model if you think i need to get a better one? I would even consider going over to Cannon.

Or as i have small amount of money to spend would i be better selling my 18-55 and 55-200vr putting some money to and getting better glass?

Thank you for any and all advise you can give. :)
Click to expand...

Is the problem that the camera stops taking pictures trying to empty the buffer or do you have a problem with the fact that the shutter speed is still rather low for good action shots?

If it is the first then you need a better camera/faster memory card and to see any decent improvement you are looking for at least a D200/D90 kind of camera which s/h selll right close to £400.

If it is the second push the ISO even higher and see if that cures it. If that does help then buy faster glass... 35mm 1.8, 17-50 2.8, 50-150 2.8 and so on. Apart from the 35mm 1.8 and the 17-50 2.8 at a push none of the other solutions are going to cost you less than £350-£400.
 
Firstly thanks for all the help.

I have just come back from a talk at the local camera shop, i was advised that the little i had to spend on and upgrade on a camera body would not make a great deal of difference.

As some have already advised here the advice i was given was to get a better faster SD card to start as that would help maintain the stated FPS for my camera.

Then to get a better lens as even with my low budget (and the proceeds from sale of my kit lenses) a decent used lens would make more of difference then a slight body upgrade, then when i upgrade to a better body it can be used on that also.

I was told that Sigma and Tamron was the best to look at as a cheaper than Nikon but still quite good lenses.

Thanks again for the advise :)
 
The Nikon D40X shots are 3 fps and can write to a card at about 5 MB/sec, yes a faster card would improve that performance, but only upto a point, which is limited by how fast the camera can process the image and write to the card, not the speed of the card itself.

As for advice on upgrading, personally I would go with the lens almost every time. Old adage "put a $%%£ lens on a good camera $%%£ images, put a decent lens on a bad camera, you'll still get good images"

The 2 lenses you have 18-55 and 55-200vr especially if your challenging them with poorly lite conditions like wooded areas just won't cut the mustard, f5.6 lenses are at the bottom of the rung when it comes to fast autofocus, especially on moving subjects, you really need f2.8 or faster, OK a newer body would help with improved ISO capabilities, however that would still be combined with a faster lens. If your happy with the 200mm zoom range, have a look at the sigma 70-20mm f2.8 and perhaps keep an eye on the 2nd hand market, the forums on TP or 2nd dealers like mpb photpgraphy, mifsuds, ffordes, camtech, digital depot etc that have a good selection of used equipment, at least you'll be able to judge prices and set yourself a reasonable budget to afford a new lens.
 
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