Hello, I am new to this forum and looking for some advice about my Camera. Currently I have a 400D with a 17-85 IS Lens and an old 70-300 lens (that I originally used with my old EOS 300 Film Camera). I have never really been happy with the 400D and 17-85 lens combination. It seems the images aren't bright or sharp enough.
I am planning a trip to Thailand this summer, hopping around islands and spending a few days at an elephant sanctuary and doing a bit of jungle trekking etc. so I thought I might like to upgrade the 400D and lenses to something newer.
I generally take portrait and landscape shots but will be taking some wildlife shots in Thailand and also want to capture my daughters with the elephants.
So the question is do I upgrade the camera, lens or both - I really like the look and feel of the 70D and the 760D possibly with the 18-135 STM lens but should I think of keeping the 400D and getting a different lens but what? What would work best and not break the bank - I think I could spend around STG £800
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Many thanks in advance
I'm guessing that this is your major problem. If you are underexposing in camera, and then having to brighten the image in post the results will always disappoint. If you are doing this, then moving to a new camera won't really help either, as you will still have dark underexposed images. What I would really suggest is upping your exposure compensation by about 2/3rd stop to ensure that you have got a good exposure in camera and then shoot RAW. If you are unsure about shooting RAW then I would suggest moving to the last version of DPP 3.x, as I don't think the 400D is supported in DPP 4.x. The advantage of shooting RAW is that you can then benefit from all of the advances in RAW processing that have happened since the 400D was initially released. The advantage with DPP is that it can read all the Canon in body processing settings, and so produces an initial conversion that should be pretty close to the camera settings. I think the 450D was the first of the XXXD line to get Canon's Picture Styles, to control how the image looks out of the camera, rather than the more limited controls of the earlier bodies. The advantage of RAW and DPP though is that you can apply the picture styles to the images from the older cameras too. This will make a big difference to your results. You might not need to do much more than select a new set of default settings to apply to the RAW files, apply that default conversion to the RAW files using DPP and save the JPEG files, using DPP's batch processing mode.
I shot with a 300D for many years, and almost straight away I started shooting in RAW only. Although I do not use the Canon RAW converter, as converters have improved over the years, I have been able to do back over old images and reprocess in the new converter, this has usually resulted in improvements to the quality of the resulting image. Upgrading the in body JPEG processing engine is something the is never going to happen though.
Alan
