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Chicken or egg? Body or glass?

M38A1

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I call it the cart before the horse, the chicken before the egg. Now I can call it the body or the glass.

My brother-in-law is in a quandary on what to do so I figured I'd try to help. But I'm not helping much. :rofl:

He has my older Nikon D40 and a kit 18-55. It served me well in cutting my teeth with digital and has served him well with his shooting. But yesterday he asked what to do since he can't get close to his subjects in church to shoot them and he want's to be un-obtrusive shooting them.

Simple huh? Just get a longer lens. It's complicated now in the fact that his D40 only has a max of ISO1600 and if I recall, it's not great above about 800 for noise. So any 'cheap' glass will be about f/3.5-5.6 which kills him on the low light church stuff. It's further complicated by the fact that the D40 is that 'entry' body which doesn't have the focus motor IN the body so it relies on the lens.

I told him in my first reply that at this point, he's not even able to take the shots he wants, so go for some inexpensive glass just for the reach. Then my second reply was a body that had much better ISO performance and focus motor in the body.

I've probably confused him more than anything.

Maybe I should just point him to Dear George


Any suggestions?
 
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Try brighter lights. The more light the better.
Tom
 
Shoot with the body he has, invest in the best glass he can afford. I have gone through several bodies but I still have the L lenses I bought for those different bodies.

As far as noise goes, if you have LR5 have him take some shots at 1600 and see what the NR in LR5 can do with those images.

Also NIK software has some very effective NR software would be worth looking into.
 
The D40 is alot better camera than just an "entry level" camera. I've used mine for weddings and high school sports and gotten pretty good results.

My suggestion is to buy legacy primes: fast, cheap and readily available. The only drawback is that they only manual focus and manual exposure on the D40.

My first fast tele was an ai-s Nikkor 135mm 2.8 I bought for $75.00. With the DX crop factor, that's a 180 2.8.

Depending on what the BIL shoots will determine the ideal focal length. Stopping fast action may not be a problem in church, so high speeds and manual focus might not be an issue.

I have a big collection of MF Nikkors I bought and used on the D40; I really like them. I recently bought the D7000 specifically just so it will meter on the legacy lenses.
 
Your link in the OP is no good ;-)
 
Ohhhh... I remember that link when I was in the same boat as your BIL :lol2: I opted for the D7000 and LOVE it over the D40. I just wish I had the coin to also opt for the 2.8 24-70 and 70-200!

My experience shooting in a church with poor lighting is that the ISO performance of the body does nice with the noise reduction in Lightroom 4. Also, the ability to shoot in RAW and mess with white balance is very convenient because of the different light sources in the church. My primary lens is the 18-200 F3.5-5.6 I bought with the camera as a kit. The 2.8 lenses would be nice because the ISO often wants to run over 1600 even with the lens at the f3.5 setting. I set the auto ISO limit to 1600 just so it gets my attention and I have to manually override it. The problem I run into is that if I don't override it, the shutter speed starts getting slow enough that blur becomes a problem.
 
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