New to Photography - Need Camera purchase advise

[Vanmadic.living]

Hi All,

I am about a month away from finally purchasing my first camera and just after a bit of advise

My main focus i really want to be doing with the camera is Astrophotography & Landscape (Portrait & Timelapses ect). On that note, i do intend to do the occasional Wildlife & In door/out door photos of Bands/gigs

Money really isn't much of an issue, but to give some indication looking to keep my budget up to around $4200.00 AUD (Camera Body and including the lense that comes in the package)




The Cameras that have really caught my attention;
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* Nikon D500 - Read plenty of great reviews and comparisons of what this camera has to offer. The D500 really seems to have some great specs and useful features.

After learning and reading abit more about DX sensors this is really the only issue i have with it. Will this really impact on my Landscape/Astro photos?


* Nikon D750 - Again, read good reviews on this and also being a Full-Frame. But the D500 seems to have the edge in terms of other extra features


* Canon-EOS-6D - This is the very least liked of my choices. On that note I have heard great things about this camera. But from what i can see the Nikon D750 seems to out perform the Canon 6D
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Really i want to know is the DX Sensor going to hinder my choice on choosing the D500 in terms of my main focus being Landscape and Astro timelapses? The DX Sensor is literally the only thing that is holding me back on the D500

But is it honestly that much of a big deal, is there a way of compensate of the lost "cropped" image you would otherwise get in an FX ?

apologies if im not really making sense of all of this. I've only just starting reading into all this and trying to wrap my head around it all

Thoughts ?

 

[Dave Colangelo]

I can speak to the nikons a bit (I would say go Nikon but thats just me). You will find endless debate on Nikon VS Cannon these days but the truth is they both make very good cameras in their own regards and there are plenty of lenses available for both. I like that Nikon can take any Nikon lens made since the mid 50's allowing me to use lots of great vintage glass.

First off as for compensating for the "cropped" image this only matters for lenses of equivalent focal length used on both bodies. You can always gain the field of view back by using a different lens on the DX bodies. For this people will often talk about "35mm equivalents" when talking about this. For example if I take my 50mm prime (older manual style) and mount it on my DX body the field of view will be closer to what an ~75mm is on an FX body. Its all relative and its better to think about lenses in a "super wide" "wide" "normal" and "telle" sense and somewhat abstract the hard mm measurement numbers. There is a nice video that explains it here.

For astrophotography you may gain some benefit from the full frame (and this holds true for most types of photography) generally speaking full frame has a better signal to noise ratio than their crop counterparts but like anything it depends.

I have taken some very nice astrophotography pictures on my D3300 (crop sensor) and I have seen lots of other friends use crop sensors to take great star photos as well.

If you have the budget it may be worth it to go for the lesser camera and use the money on a nice star tracker mount.

I think you will be happy with either the D500 or the D750 as they are both really good cameras. Do you have a camera now? What are you coming from?

Regards
Dave

 

[KmH]

Right now the hottest astrophotography DSLR is the Nikon D5300, because of it's very low image noise Sony Exmor image sensor.
For astrophotography we check a camera's image sensor black point and read noise values.
Unfortunately the D500 is new enough such info is not yet readily available.
Sensorgen.info data for Nikon D5300

But, I suspect you are talking about putting a DSLR/lens on a camera tripod and making 15 second or so wide angle exposures that have both land and night sky in the scene - like the popular wide angle shots of the Milky Way's center portion.

When I hear the term astrophotography I think of faint deep-sky objects and a DSLR mounted on the focuser of a telescope that is on a motor driver equatorial mount and exposures are several minutes long. The field of view with a setup like that can only image a tiny part of the sky.
Deep sky astrophotography is very technical, both in collecting the image(s) and in the post processing and utilizes imaging techniques developed for the Hubble Space Telescope.

If you are wanting to do deep-sky astrophotography I highly recommend this book by Charles Bracken:
The Deep-sky Imaging Primer

 

[robbins.photo]

Good astrophotography really is more about technique than anything else. From the types of photography you list, I'd probably look more towards the D750 if it were me.

The D500 does a pretty good job in lowlight, but if your going to be shooting bands/gigs I'd have to give the advantage there to the full frame sensor. Shooting indoors without a flash, the FX format really shines.

Nothing against the D500 mind you, it's an amazing camera - and if your doing more wildlife shooting that would probably be the way to go, the APS-C sensor is nice to have for telephoto shooting and the high FPS means capturing things like birds in flight becomes a whole lot easier. The AF system on the D500 is pretty incredible from what I've read and seen.

Of the two I'd probably give the D750 the edge for being a more "general purpose" camera, meaning it will acquit itself very well in the situations you describe. So really it kind of comes down to what type of shooting will you be doing most?

 

[dennybeall]

Some random thoughts........
Much of the value of more expensive cameras is in their ability to take lots of pictures very fast and be very rugged and able to stand up to hard use. Lenses are where the rubber really meets the road - the camera body just captures the image. Having a very low noise sensor would be most important in the kind of photography you're interested in doing.

 

[Vanmadic.living]

Many thanks for the responses everyone

Yes you are right. D500 probly better if wild life was my main focus. And i have no Camera at this stage. I want to make sure my first camera is a good choice !



KmH - I note you mentioned the Nikon D5300, low image noise on the Sony Exmor image sensor

I've actually been looking into Sony's Camera capabilities towards Astrophotography, more so the Sony Alpha 7S II

surprised i haven't really heard much about Sony's cameras, they appear to operate exceptionally well in low light

are mirrorless camera's looked down upon or just not so popular in the Photography community ?

anyone able to vouch on Sony Camera's ?

 

[beagle100]

Many thanks for the responses everyone



surprised i haven't really heard much about Sony's cameras, they appear to operate exceptionally well in low light

are mirrorless camera's looked down upon or just not so popular in the Photography community ?

anyone able to vouch on Sony Camera's ?

I will vouch for Sony cameras (if you don't shoot sports and are not too worried about lens)

www.flickr.com/photos/mmirrorless

 

[Solarflare]

Sony has a bad reputation for various reasons that do not appear on spec sheets, namely lens quality and selection, serious issues with support service quality, poor menus (chaotic and with extremely cryptic naming for features), and inferior post processing capabilities compared to the masters (Nikon, Canon, Fuji).

Also mirrorless cameras of course suffer from various issues in general, such as low battery life, inferior sports autofocus, and issues with the electronic viewfinder (lag especially in low light, flicker in artificial light, long pauses during taking a picture, limited dynamic range representation etc).

If you want to go mirrorless, I would strongly suggest Fuji X or Micro Four Thirds instead of Sony. The MFT system has a really small sensor though (17x13.3mm) and Fuji X has "only" APS-C (24x16mm) instead of full frame (36x24mm). So if you want to go full frame, the only option for mirrorless is Sony.

 

[robbins.photo]

Yes you are right. D500 probly better if wild life was my main focus. And i have no Camera at this stage. I want to make sure my first camera is a good choice !

Honestly nothing you listed as an option would be a bad choice. I shoot wildlife on a D600, and sure a D500 would most likely result in a lot more shots in the "keeper" category but the D600 does well enough even at 5 frames per second that I don't really feel the need to upgrade.

I do like the full frame, when shooting indoors in low light it does give me a significant advantage over the APS-C sensor cameras I shot previously (D7100, D5200, D5100) but really it just makes it easier to get certain shots. Less time spent in post on noise reduction, less time adjusting EC values to get just the right shot, etc. I could still shoot a D7100 or even a D5200 and still get usable results, the D600 just makes my life easier in these types of shooting situations.

So in the final analysis it will really be your skills as a photographer that will make the biggest difference int he final product.

 

[chuasam]

Given your choices : D750
the D500 is more a sport shooter's or wildlife photography.
If you need the crop, the speed = Go D500.
Heck..if you have more to spare. Look at a D810A