D3000 upgrade?

[Ethang]

Hey everyone!
So I've been taking photos on and off since june 2011, when I bough my Nikon D3000. Lately, I find myself wanting to possibly upgrade in the future, however right now I don't have the biggest budget. I want to start looking now so that way I can look for deals on the camera I want to get.
Here are my issues with the D3000:

• Its poor performance and any ISO 800 and up.
• No photo bracketing so i could try taking HDR's/ get the correct exposure
• highlights are often way blown way out,
• the overall color reproduction could be better.

Here is the gear I currently have:

• the d3000
• the kit 18-55 VR lens
• the tamron 70-300 VC

Now onto the actual cameras that I am thinking about. The d5100 was my original choice because of its features and such, however looking, is the d5200 a better choice? Nikon lists them at the same price however i think this is a glitch ( http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Products/Digital-SLR-Cameras/index.page ). Also I see that BH and adorama are having 200$ rebates on the d5100, are these deals common or should I quickly jump on it? Also, I am not even sure, is the d5100 the right camera for me or should I look at something else?
Thanks,
Ethan

 

[Mach0]

What's the budget?

 

[silve225]

the d5100 probably has those deals because the d5200 replaced it

 

[SCraig]

Hey everyone!
So I've been taking photos on and off since june 2011, when I bough my Nikon D3000. Lately, I find myself wanting to possibly upgrade in the future, however right now I don't have the biggest budget. I want to start looking now so that way I can look for deals on the camera I want to get.
Here are my issues with the D3000:

• Its poor performance and any ISO 800 and up.
• No photo bracketing so i could try taking HDR's/ get the correct exposure
• highlights are often way blown way out,
• the overall color reproduction could be better.

Here is the gear I currently have:

• the d3000
• the kit 18-55 VR lens
• the tamron 70-300 VC

Now onto the actual cameras that I am thinking about. The d5100 was my original choice because of its features and such, however looking, is the d5200 a better choice? Nikon lists them at the same price however i think this is a glitch ( Digital SLR Cameras | Nikon D-SLR Cameras & Compact D-SLR Cameras ). Also I see that BH and adorama are having 200$ rebates on the d5100, are these deals common or should I quickly jump on it? Also, I am not even sure, is the d5100 the right camera for me or should I look at something else?
Thanks,
Ethan

You do realize that 2 of your 4 complaints are probably your fault and one of them is not knowing how to use your camera.

No photo bracketing so i could try taking HDR's/ get the correct exposure

Use manual mode and adjust the exposure as necessary up and down however many stops you want to bracket, or just increase or decrease the exposure compensation to accomplish the same thing.

highlights are often way blown way out

Blaming a camera for an overexposure is like blaming food for being overweight.

the overall color reproduction could be better

Unless you are shooting in RAW you have adjustable saturation adjustment in your camera. See page 87 of your manual.

Not trying to be a smartass, but I just think that you should understand that simply upgrading my not solve your problems and then you'll be angry at the new body. The D5100 or D5200 would be excellent choices, however I strongly recommend you do some reading on what you have first. The D3000 is Nikon's lowest entry-level camera, and I can well understand wanting to upgrade to something better, but you could probably get more out of what you already have.

 

[thunderkyss]

I've got a D3000. I wasn't thrilled with it, one of the things I noted was poor low light performance. I define low light basically as my living room in the evening. I've got high ceilings & recessed incandescent. Shooting at ISO800 and f3.5, my shutter speed would be so slow that I would need a tripod to prevent motion blur.

I'd raise the ISO settings to 1600 & Hi-1, I was able to raise my shutter speed to a usable range. However, there was a lot of noise. The pictures were very grainy & not very usable.

I eventually got a D200 & was surprised by how much better my images looked at ISO800. I was also pleasantly surprised that I was able to adjust my ISO in thirds or halves. Instead of going from 400 to 800, or 800 to 1600; I could go from 400, 500, 560, 640, 800, 1000, 1100, 1250, 1600. Which at the very least "feels" more professional.

After reading a few more posts here & getting a better understanding of what noise is, where it comes from, & how to minimize it, I started "exposing to the right" & found that I was able to reduce a lot of the noise I had been seeing in low light situations. I went back to my D3000 & tried the exposing to the right thing & sure enough, I was able to get usable photos.

The thing about exposing to the right that helped me understand what's happening, is that the camera is recording all that information that is represented by the histogram. For some reason, the camera dedicates most of it's resources to that information on the right. In low light, the majority of the information wants to be on the left, so you have to compensate your exposure value. In my living room I have to overexpose by 2 clicks (two thirds).

When I first began reading about exposing to the right & overexposing my photos, it didn't sound right to me. Sounded like blowing my highlights or something. But that's not the case, it is overexposed for the available light..... looking at them, you'd think the exposure was "just right"

 

[greybeard]

You would be a good candidate for a new D7100 but, if you can't swing it, look at a D7000 as the price is due to drop a bit when the D7100's hit the stores.