Upgrade camera or invest in lenses?

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mrsraggle

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Rachel
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I don't have much disposable cash at the moment having recently got married but I'm looking to start upgrading my kit to eventually enter the wedding/portrait business arena.

I have a Nikon D60 and want to know whether you guys think I should upgrade my camera first, or spend my cash on investing in decent lenses (currently only have the AF-S 18-55 DX II VR Lens and Sigma 70-300mm F/4-5.6 APO DG Macro).

Many thanks!
 
I think you already have a good camera, go for the new lenses:thumbs:

:nikon:

D3, D200 ,17 -55 2.8 80 -200 2.8 24-120 VR 50 1.8 SHARPY SB900 Monster
10-20 Siggy
 
what can't you do with your current kit?

and as a newbie welcome to the forum. :wave:
 
Do you already have or have you considered back-up kit in case any of it fails on the job?
 
mrsraggle said:
It doesn't feel fast enough - I don't think I could easily capture a one off moment.
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Which part of the process do you feel is the bottleneck e.g. is it the autofocus or is the shutter speed too slow or do you want more frames per second?
 
DigitalRelish said:
Do you already have or have you considered back-up kit in case any of it fails on the job?
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I have considered it - I have a Canon 10D on loan from a friend at the moment and access to other free hires but would like to have my own second camera before setting up myself.

I'm not sure whether to buy a Nikon D90 and use the D60 as a second, OR whether to upgrade to better lenses for the D60 first and get a decent portfolio...

I can only do one or the other over the next 6 months or so. So it's a D90 with kit lens + D60 with kit and 70-300mm OR Nikon D60 with 18-55 kit, sigma 70-300mm AND 35mm f1.8 AND 50mm f1.8 (or other similarly priced combo)...
 
DigitalRelish said:
Which part of the process do you feel is the bottleneck e.g. is it the autofocus or is the shutter speed too slow or do you want more frames per second?
Click to expand...

More frames per second. Even on continuous shooting in daylight I feel I can be waiting 5-10 seconds between shots. The spec states "The camera offers continuous shooting at 3.0 fps" but I don't think I've ever experienced that.
 
Ordinarily the answer is invest in lenses every time. But with the D60 you're restricted to lenses you can autofocus with. See here Which means you can't buy some of Nikon's best lenses, unless your happy to manually focus. So I'd suggest that you buy something like a second hand D200 body and build up your lens collection from there.
 
mrsraggle said:
More frames per second. Even on continuous shooting in daylight I feel I can be waiting 5-10 seconds between shots. The spec states "The camera offers continuous shooting at 3.0 fps" but I don't think I've ever experienced that.
Click to expand...

I use my D60 for motorsport mainly and although I rarely shoot more than one frame at a time I have it set to continuous and have shot at 3fps shooting raw.
 
mrsraggle said:
More frames per second. Even on continuous shooting in daylight I feel I can be waiting 5-10 seconds between shots. The spec states "The camera offers continuous shooting at 3.0 fps" but I don't think I've ever experienced that.
Click to expand...

So, in continuous shooting mode, bright daylight conditions, holding down the shutter release button only gives you 1 frame every 5-10 seconds? Something's not right...

Does the camera give any kind of indication as to what it's doing during this time? Do you have other memory cards to use to rule out the possibility of a duff one?

Are you shooting RAW or JPG or both? Does the camera take a photo as soon as you press the shutter release button or is there a delay?
 
DigitalRelish said:
So, in continuous shooting mode, bright daylight conditions, holding down the shutter release button only gives you 1 frame every 5-10 seconds? Something's not right...

Does the camera give any kind of indication as to what it's doing during this time? Do you have other memory cards to use to rule out the possibility of a duff one?

Are you shooting RAW or JPG or both? Does the camera take a photo as soon as you press the shutter release button or is there a delay?
Click to expand...

Yep, you got it. Incidentally it's gone back to Nikon last week due to a sensor problem (all photos coming out purple and grainy) but prior to that when the photos were fine I struggled to shoot continuously. I have tried two different memory cards and I shoot in RAW.

I think, it's been a week or so since I last used it, but I think it focuses again between shots.
 
Sounds like you should get the camera fixed and invest in good lenses to me
 
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