Which camera for low light photography?

[Overread]

In low light tripods are great, but his subject is also a living one. If he's shooting them with really slow shutter speeds it will be really hit or miss if the lizard remains perfectly still (they do breath so they will have minor motion there almost all the time). Thus even with a tripod he will still need a respectable shutter speed in order to get the shot - esp as he can't use flash on the lizards*.




* far as I'm aware flash shouldn't hurt them, however I appreciate that nocturnal creatures used to dim conditions might well be unsettled or distressed with flash lighting. Esp if its used in a repeat fashion (most animals should be able to survive without long term harm since flash would be akin to lighting encountered in the wild).
The only other option would be to use a lighting system outside of their sight range band - however that requires a slightly more specialist approach and more deep understanding of their known visual light band that they can see (and there might also be limits on how much data there is on that )

 

[SCraig]

My recommendation is going to be a bit different from everyone else's. Except for the tripod part. A good, solid tripod will make an enormous difference in low light.

I do agree that a DSLR with a zoom macro lens is without question the way to go. However rather than buying a bunch of stuff that you don't yet know how to use and will get disappointing results from straight out of the box, my recommendation would be to find a local camera club, talk with some of the members, and ask them to take some shots of your Geckos. They would know how to use the gear, they would have a varying selection of equipment, and you would be able to see some good results based solely on the equipment and taking the lack of knowledge out of the equation.