need advice on camera upgrade

[ygb]

a couple of years ago my husband got me a used canon 20d and a tamron 70-200 f2.8 lense.
I was pretty happy with it, but when I tried to take photos of my girls rhythmic gymnastics competitions the iso limitations became quite obvious.
exactly a year ago I started looking at a diff camera that would allow me to take action shots in poor lighting conditions and decided to go with 7D, but before I said it out loud my husband snatched a 60D on after thanksgiving sales and gave it to me as a present for Christmas. While 60D was better than 20D at low light I still was shooting darker than I wanted to get the shutter speed a bit up and I didnt really like shooting higher than iso 1600. I love black and white and grain but not on rhythmic gymnastics photos. The color is everything there.

A few other areas of my beef with 60D are:
1) image quality on high ISO when shooting at the competition or in the house.
2) I like shooting my dogs in action. it could be outside or at the training facility - the light is the most awful there.
but even outside I am having a very hard time tracking my dog running at me with 60D. I dont know if its just me not knowing how to use AI servo mode, the lense or the camera. I read all I could find on using the AI servo mode and I dont know what I might be doing wrong. I use back button focus and I even tried it with my canon 50mm f1.4 lense and still I didn't like the results, some shots came out sharp but its a lot like hit and miss kind of deal instead of me getting consistent results. it could be that the fact that my dogs are black is part of the issue, but I am definitely are not chaning my dogs
3) I like shooting portraits as well. I like shooting shallow. after getting bunch of out of focus shots I stopped doing " focus and recompose" and started changing my AF points. However, now I feel that I am composing based on the AF point instead of simply worrying about composition. Again, that maybe just my lack of skill and being too green but I am wishing I had more focus points and I am wishing I could select more than just one or all.
4) I like shooting a lot of things:. I would like to try some landscape and I love street photography although I had been too scared to try.

So I started thinking that maybe I just have to wait 3 years and try to save for 5d mk 3 and maybe just rent something for a competition weekend( its a last one for one of my girls and I'd like to get some nice shots). 5dmk 3 is way out of my price range and the way things had been going , not sure if 3 years will be enough to save for one. But then I read the review of 7D mk 2 and it seem hit on a lot of things I really wanted ( although some comments on this forum are not as favorable in case of DR).

So my question is, what would you guys recommend? go with 7d2? 70D? oh yeah I broke my 60D yesterday so I am back to my 20D. Hopefully its fixable. so maybe fix my 60D and stick with it and just rent something for a weekend of competition and try to save for 5d mark 3 or maybe buy better lenses instead?
thank you very much for the feedback. sorry the post had been so long.
Yuliya

 

[jaomul]

Have you considered the 6d. It gets bad press for moving subjects because of its simple autofocus, but a friend has one and shoots all sorts of moving targets with great success.

It is even better than a 5d3 at high iso, but cheaper though you will find fullframes work different with your current lenses, not firing as much apparent zoom

 

[ygb]

I looked at 6d last night, but 4.5fps were kind of discouraging.
I think 60d has higher fps and I miss some shots.
When girls going into the jump there is only one shot when they are in full split in the air. The second before or after is too late.
Same with dogs, when the dog is taking a jump there is one shot when he is just over the jump when the form looks nice. I start the burst as he is going into the jump and often I end up with a shot just before and just after.
So I am a bit wary of 4.5fps.

 

[ronlane]

I wouldn't let the DR talk discourage you from the 7DmkII, just yet anyway.

 

[ygb]

I wouldn't let the DR talk discourage you from the 7DmkII, just yet anyway.

I tried researching it a bit last night. its all really mumbo-jumbo to me but it seems I had found an article that says that its not as good on really high ISOs. and I dont really need really high iso, I probably need very decent 6400. I understand that it might be not as good as 1D or 5d mk 3, but it can't be worse than 60D can it? I am not bashing 60D, I might be just too new to it, but to me 60D in good light produces very nice shots, at least for my taste. I haven't really tried printing anything and I would like to.
I went yesterday from "OMG it sounds like a perfect camera for me", to "WHAT?! I am very confused"

 

[ronlane]

There are a lot of reports out there that the 7Dmkii is good with high ISO. It will never compare to the 1D or the 5D or the 6D because they are all full-frame. It should be better than the 60D because it is a newer sensor and is using dual processors.

 

[goodguy]

To get good low light performance full frame is your true real answer.
7D has exactly same low light performance as the 60D as they use same sensor.
70D is very close to the 60D in low light.
According to Tony from a review he made on the 7D II you are looking at 1/3 of a stop better low light performance compared to the 7D I
Getting the 6D will mean a huge jump in low light performance but its AF system is very basic.
Currently the only really good low light performance Canon camera will be the 5D III which I saw is going for reasonable price nowadays, saw it for around 2600$ a couple of days ago on a sale.

Another option is of course jump ship to Nikon the D750 is the perfect camera for you!

 

[gsgary]

There are a lot of reports out there that the 7Dmkii is good with high ISO. It will never compare to the 1D or the 5D or the 6D because they are all full-frame. It should be better than the 60D because it is a newer sensor and is using dual processors.

1D is not full frame

 

[ygb]

Another option is of course jump ship to Nikon the D750 is the perfect camera for you!

oh man, I dont know about jumping ships:-( I have two lenses left for canon Tamron 70-200 f2.8 and canon 50mm f1.4
yesterday together with my camera I smashed sigma 18-50 macro, I guess I will not have to worry about replacing that one if I jump ships, but replacing my 70-200 will be way out of my abilities by January first and I wouldnt be able to shoot the competitions without it.
damn, this is really hard!

thank you for the advice, I'll chew on it!
Yuliya

 

[goodguy]

Another option is of course jump ship to Nikon the D750 is the perfect camera for you!

oh man, I dont know about jumping ships:-( I have two lenses left for canon Tamron 70-200 f2.8 and canon 50mm f1.4
yesterday together with my camera I smashed sigma 18-50 macro, I guess I will not have to worry about replacing that one if I jump ships, but replacing my 70-200 will be way out of my abilities by January first and I wouldnt be able to shoot the competitions without it.
damn, this is really hard!

thank you for the advice, I'll chew on it!
Yuliya

Good luck

 

[ronlane]

There are a lot of reports out there that the 7Dmkii is good with high ISO. It will never compare to the 1D or the 5D or the 6D because they are all full-frame. It should be better than the 60D because it is a newer sensor and is using dual processors.

1D is not full frame

I keep forgetting about those 1D's that aren't full frame. Still don't think you can/SHOULD compare a 7DmkII to a 1D camera. The price difference there would cancel out pretty much everything else. IMHO.

 

[runnah]

What is your budget?

 

[jaomul]

Jumping ship in my opinion is an expensive, unnecessary move. Chances are the 7d2 will be better than your 60d. It will be faster and newer and likely better at higher iso, but even guys who bought it are saying around the net that while generally a great camera, it's image quality, in particular noise is better, but not greatly better.

Hoping to shoot at 6400 iso and get similar results to the 60d at 1600 iso is probably a bit unrealistic.

There are 1d Mark 4s around at the moment for approx same price secondhand as a 7d2 is new. To me this would seem like a great balance of speed and image quality. From what I can tell they do hi iso pretty good and the files process well. It might be worth a look

 

[BananaRepublic]

My dad has a tamron all be it 70 200 but it is a mechanical not digital, On an old Nikon. I was sure it had an adapter to fit the camera, is this no longer the case. Although I have Sigma on a Nikon 5100 and That is specified for it so ya.

 

[ygb]

What is your budget?

budget is very tight. $1800 for 7D2 might be doable, with an effort. $3300 for 5dmk3 is not really in near future. I saw some deals on ebay and some other places for body at around $2600, but I am a bit wary of those deals, there are some bad comments about sellers and $2600 is still way out of my budget. basically something about $2000.