Equipment Advice?

John Deerfield wrote:

Your camera is fine. What definitely needs an upgrade is your knowledge. Upgrading you lens is a good idea (and my comment on upgrading your knowledge is so you know why and how it all works). And investing in a tripod would be a very good idea. Obviously, there isn't any way to teach photography on a forum but lets just look at your kit 18-55mm lens. It has an aperture range of f/3.5 on the wide end (18mm) and f/5.6 at the long (55mm) end. And optically, it is a very good lens. It can be purchased for around $120 new. The "drawback" is the variable aperture: f/3.5-f/5.6. Nikon makes another lens, the Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8. For all practical purposes, it is the same focal length. Only that lens runs about $1400 new. Why. Well it is better optically (should be) but another big reason is that it is an f/2.8 lens. f/2.8 will let in almost twice as much light (two-thirds) as f/3.5. The aperture doesn't change as you zoom the lens (a constant f/2.8 if desired) so at 55mm it will let in four times more light than the kit lens. When you need to let the light in, four times more of it makes a big difference. It gets better, a relatively cheap prime lens, lets say the 35mm f/1.8 will let in even more light. It will let in over two times more light than the f/2.8 lens! Your aperture is in your lens and it is one of the three controls for controlling the exposure. The other two are your shutter speed and your ISO. The only possible help a camera can be in a low light situation is the ISO control. By using a higher ISO your camera is more sensitive to light. But there will also be more noise in the image. So "better" in low light would mean a camera that does a higher ISO with less noise. You aren't going to get a significant (if any) improvement moving from a D3000 to a D7000. You need better lenses.

The tripod is so that you don't have to use a higher ISO. One part of the exposure equation is the shutter. The lower the light, the longer the shutter is going to need to be open to record enough light. The longer the shutter is open, the more risk for blur in your image. Using a tripod negates this (again, provided your subjects aren't moving). As example, lets say that f/8, 1/50, and ISO 1600 gives me correct exposure. Well 1/30th is really hard to hand hold the camera and get a good shot. On top of that, ISO 1600 can be noisy. If we drop the ISO 200, I will get rid of the noise, but now I will need a shutter speed of 1/6 of a second... impossible to hand hold. But easy for a tripod!

I hope this helps illustrate that knowledge is the first best investment! And that lenses are typically far more important than the camera (you could get a third party or used lens for less than the Nikon 17-55 but it is the aperture that you want to look at). And that a tripod can be your friend.