First camera

I've been researching and looking at all types of cameras and I have settled on two . Either the Nikon D7100 or the Nikon D5500 . I really want to take good night shots . Does the Nikon D5500 have a high enough ISO for taking those spectacular night shots? What's your opinion on which camera because Nikon is having a sale at the moment.

I'm not a Nikon shooter but... what type of night shots? What are they of? Still objects? Moving objects? The sky? Those are a few things that will decide your needs.

The pictures will be of articheture, the sky, and moving objects, also I'm not just going to use it during the night I will take nature pictures as well as portraits of people.

Those are all very different subjects. lol. I don't have a good answer, as I do not know Nikon or shoot architecture or the sky, but this should be enough for others to start with.

I know you will want high shutter speeds for moving objects to stop motion. This will mean you will want fast lenses with wide apertures (2.8 or wider). You will also want high ISO capabilities if you do not want to deal with a ton of grain. Image stabilization will also help.

For architecture, you should simply be able to use a tripod with longer exposure. In this case, you would not need the high ISO capabilities as much.

I do not know a ton about astro photography. I have heard it can get expensive (but so can any area of photography).

In any case, a good lens is going to be equally as important as a decent body, maybe even more important.

I am going to take a bit of a different tack. Buy a Nikon D610. I know it costs a bit more than what you are considering. But it has a much larger sensor, which will produce much better results for the types of shots you are considering.

If you buy a crop-sensor body, you will quickly run into its limitations. You will then want a larger sensor (full-frame) camera. Buying twice is always more expensive than buying right.

If you are still reading, please consider that the camera you choose is a proportionally small part of the money it will cost you do to photography well. The $500 to $700 larger initial investment will save you money in the long run. Once you add up the total cost of lenses, flash units, stands, umbrellas, tripods, and all that, the higher cost of getting a better camera to start with sort of makes sense.

When I first went from film to digital, I spent a lot of money on crop-sensor stuff. I ran into the limitations of crop sensors relatively quickly. I sold it all, and put the proceeds toward what I should have bought in the first place. The downside? Good full frame glass is more costly than crop frame glass. I don't know about Nikon, but in the Canon world, the image quality improvement is worth the money.

My advice would be the Nikon D700. It is a perfect full frame camera and has wonder high ISO performance. You can find them used for 800 or less these days. They are very durable and still a capable camera body.

slickaj115 wrote in post #17622632
My advice would be the Nikon D700. It is a perfect full frame camera and has wonder high ISO performance. You can find them used for 800 or less these days. They are very durable and still a capable camera body.

Even better than my idea. I didn't think of used.

slickaj115 wrote in post #17622632
My advice would be the Nikon D700. It is a perfect full frame camera and has wonder high ISO performance. You can find them used for 800 or less these days. They are very durable and still a capable camera body.

Personally, if you were going to go that route I'd just get a Sony a7 (the original one) and pick up an LA-EA4 adapter for wildlife.

any ideas for a good lens for that. like maybe get a 35 or 50 prime and a zoom ? any ideas?