Second body dilemma - FX vs DX

[eltawater]

I'm finding myself in a bit of a kit quandary and I'm hoping the wiseheads of the forum may be able to give me a push in the right direction please?

As a hobby I get asked to take photos at birthday parties, weekly children's events and school plays. These events tend to take place in poorly lit village or school halls.

My current kit complement for these types of events tends to be:

Nikon D7000
Sigma 70-200 2.8 DG (non-OS) - Kids running around and photos from a distance
Nikon 35mm 1.8 AF-S - Upclose shots and cake presentation
Tokina 11-16 - The occasional switch to a very wide group wide shot

I have several speedlights available but they're a bit a non-starter due to some of the focal lengths involved and the lack of bounce opportunity in some of the venues.

I'm increasingly bumping into two key issues which I'd like to solve with a second body.

1) Switching lenses is becoming quite a faff which I'd like to avoid in a dusty hall
2) Low light noise being an issue when cropping. Slowing down shutter speed is a no-no as the kids will just blur

I've pretty much resigned myself to buying a second body to solve issue 1). The question is whether or not to add an FX body to take advantage of the low light benefits of the larger sensor, or stick with the cheaper DX body.

My used options are so far:

1) Cheap DX body (Nikon 3200) - £180
Cheap, shareable SD Cards, non-shareable battery, 24MP crop sensor

2) Cheapish FX body (Nikon d700) - £450
Cheapish, non-shareable Compact flash, non-shareable battery, 12MP FX sensor

3) Expensive FX body (Nikon d610) - £750
Expensive, shareable SD cards, shareable battery, 24MP FX sensor

Whichever way I go, I'm likely to attach the 70-200 lens to the second body and keep the 35mm on the D7000. I do have a 50mm 1.8D which could be attached to the FX bodies but I may as well use the 35mm on the D7000 at that point.

The d3200 gives me the ability to re-use my existing pool of SD cards with a higher resolution sensor compared to my d7000

The d700 gives me cheapish access to an FX sensor but then requires investment in Compact flash cards, bringing me closer to the cost of the d610.

The d610 lets me reuse both batteries and SD cards from the d7000 but comes at a significant cost and would be a big stretch financially.
Am I really likely to see over £500 worth of difference between the d3200 and the d610 at this point?

What should I do?

Edited by eltawater on Wednesday 22 November 11:18

[_dobbo_]

One thing you haven't mentioned is the change of focal length you'll get switching to FX. Assuming the 70-200 is FX format, it will actually be a 70-200 rather than a 112-320. If this might impact your results it's worth considering.

I moved to FX (D200->D800) and the benefits were phenomenal, but much of that improvement wasn't just a result of FX, it was from many years of progress in other areas (high ISO noise for example).

[Craikeybaby]

I like having both FX and DX bodies, however in my case they both share batteries, CF cards and the same controls/menu, which makes it easy.

[eltawater]

_dobbo_ said:

One thing you haven't mentioned is the change of focal length you'll get switching to FX. Assuming the 70-200 is FX format, it will actually be a 70-200 rather than a 112-320. If this might impact your results it's worth considering.

Thanks, it's something I'm assuming will be offset a little bit by the increase in pixel density of the sensor on the D610 so I'll end up with the same resolution of photos when cropped down but just with a lot less noise. Presumably this goes against the case for the D700 with its 12MP sensor, FX or not.

[Simpo Two]

I have no justification for this view, but would rather have a top-end DX than an entry-level FX. And as said changing to FX will be like standing 10 feet further back.

D7200?

[_dobbo_]

If poorly lit is your problem then you need high ISO performance above everything else - particularly as for most of your lenses you can't go faster without spending loads of money.

You could do worse than go over here, select Nikon, order by "sports" (which gives you a rating on ISO performance) and see what pops up. Might throw a few more bodies into the mix.

https://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Ratings

[eltawater]

Simpo Two said:

D7200?

Only a touch (£100) cheaper than the D610 on the second hand market

[eltawater]

_dobbo_ said:

If poorly lit is your problem then you need high ISO performance above everything else - particularly as for most of your lenses you can't go faster without spending loads of money.

You could do worse than go over here, select Nikon, order by "sports" (which gives you a rating on ISO performance) and see what pops up. Might throw a few more bodies into the mix.

https://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Ratings

top of the list is...

[8bit]

eltawater said:

Only a touch (£100) cheaper than the D610 on the second hand market

I'm also looking at the D610, if you're looking at used prices then also worth considering is a brand new, grey import from somewhere like HDew Cameras. The body only price for the D610 is only £20 than some of the better condition used ones from mpb.com, it'll be brand new and you still get a couple of years' warranty with HDew, mpb.com only give a few months warranty on used kit.

[eltawater]

That just poses me a different question though :P

Do I spend £200 on a second hand D3300
or £879 on a grey import new D610 and will I see £679 worth of difference :P

My current D7000 was bought from MPB 5 years ago so I've no qualms about buying second hand from them, and their cheapest is currently £764 for a "good" condition D610.

Edited by eltawater on Thursday 23 November 13:28

[8bit]

I've bought a few lenses from MPB but never a body. I would certainly trust them, just I guess there's far more to potentially go wrong with a camera body so the peace of mind is nice. I bought my Sigma 18-35mm lens there which was described as "Good" condition and to be honest it looked almost immaculate, but as above I think I'd probably quite like the warranty for a body.

[_dobbo_]

My D800 body came from MBP with 200,000+ shutter actuations. It's nearly perfect and has been going strong for 3 more years in my ownership.

[Simpo Two]

eltawater said:

Do I spend £200 on a second hand D3300
or £879 on a grey import new D610 and will I see £679 worth of difference :P

Consider what you want to do and what ISO you actually *need* to do the job. Then you don't need to be swayed simply by whatever comes top in some test. 10 million ISO, 20 million ISO... I can shoot an amdram rehearsal in a village hall at 1000. OK so a bit more would be nice but it's all my old banger will do and it's a test of technique. Do you *need* 100 bazilliion ISOs? Do you *need* FX?

[eltawater]

Simpo Two said:

Consider what you want to do and what ISO you actually *need* to do the job. Then you don't need to be swayed simply by whatever comes top in some test. 10 million ISO, 20 million ISO... I can shoot an amdram rehearsal in a village hall at 1000. OK so a bit more would be nice but it's all my old banger will do and it's a test of technique. Do you *need* 100 bazilliion ISOs? Do you *need* FX?

That's an interesting question I suppose.

Below is an example of what I'm trying to overcome at the moment.

Shot with the Sigma 70-200 wide open at f2.8 due to the appalling low light in the village hall.
ISO 400 as that's as high as I dared go at the time.
1/160 as the Sigma is quite heavy with no VR/OS so I suffer badly from camera shake if I go slower.

If I raise the exposure levels in post processing, the hair and the eye detail just ends up being a bit of a dithered mess. Applying noise reduction only gets me so far, I'm assuming the dithering/noise is just a limitation of the DX sensor and that I wouldn't see it this badly when using an FX equipped camera?

[GravelBen]

eltawater said:

Shot with the Sigma 70-200 wide open at f2.8 due to the appalling low light in the village hall.
ISO 400 as that's as high as I dared go at the time.
1/160 as the Sigma is quite heavy with no VR/OS so I suffer badly from camera shake if I go slower.

The D7000 may not be up with newer FF bodies for high ISO performance, but you can go a heap higher than ISO 400 with it, I don't do much people photography but use ISO 1600-3200 reasonably often with mine to keep shutter speeds up for birds under bush canopy etc.

I've found that I often get less noise and a better result by pushing ISO higher for a good exposure and faster shutter than by keeping it low and having to push an underexposed image up in lightroom afterwards.

Hard to tell clearly from your screenshot but part of the issue with that image could be subject movement at that shutter speed, and the focus being on the arm in front of the face, shallow depth of field at f2.8 meaning the face and hair are a bit out of focus?


Here is a recent example at ISO 3200 (Nikon 80-200f2.8 @ 170mmm, f2.8, 1/400) FYI. Noise visible (especially in darker background) but tolerable IMO.

NZ South Island Robin by gravelben, on Flickr

And one at ISO 1600, quite clean:

NZ Bush Robin by gravelben, on Flickr


Pushing your D7000 to higher ISO than you have previously doesn't help with the other issue of dusty lens changes though I guess.

Edited by GravelBen on Friday 24th November 00:19

[Simpo Two]

I think sticking to 400 is your problem. That was the effective limit for a D70, my D200 will go to 800 (1,000 in extremis) and the D300 1600. Your D7000 is more modern than all of them.

From your samples you're underexposing because you're afraid to go above 400 and have hit the aperture/shutter speed limits. Then you're trying to haul it up in post which is making noise.

Next time, try 1000 ISO. It might give you the breakthrough you want!

[eltawater]

Thanks all, I have a party shoot tomorrow so I'll let you know how I get on

[_dobbo_]

For what it's worth I'd say ISO 6400 on my D800 is about the same as ISO 800 was in terms of noise. So there was massive improvement in that period of time - what I can't comment on is whether a modern DX body would get you the same sort of improvement.

[eltawater]

I'm going to RIAT next year so I've also got one eye on whether to buy just an FX camera body or save the money and spend it on some big long glass instead.

[_dobbo_]

Leftfield answer B, sell everything, buy one of these