upgrade from older DSLR

[Sirocco]

Afternoon Gents,

After getting back from my 5 Weeks in West Africa I have been through my 500 odd photo's and edited the RAW files from my Nikon D70s. I have found that when cropping down I seem to lose stacks of quality. I admit that I have cropped the pictures quite a lot, but I was hoping the quality would have remained a little better as I was shooting on a 300mm lens. Its only affected my Wildlife shots, but I may never get to see Fishing Eagles again! Otherwise I am very happy with results it gives me, especially landscape and general on the stock 18-70mm lens.

I have put this down to the low 6MP count of this older camera (5 years old?) or is it my glass? (genuine 70-300mm G series, cheap $200 lens).

Im just a little confused. Is it time to upgrade? I see the new D7000 is out, but i was thinking that this has now knocked the price of the D90 and imagine this one would be a good bet (can buy body and sell mine for not much outlay).

what do others think? am I barking up the wrong tree? Do I just need to dial in my post processing technique?

by comparison I have attached the fishing eagle shot at 300mm then cropped in PS and another from inside the Grand Mosque at Djenne. This this has a higher ISO (400?) though but on the 18-70mm stock glass. I will look in PS for the dets if anyone thinks there is more to it.

Appreciate your collective knowledge and advice :coffeedrink:

G

 

[Lost Canadian]

Heavy cropping of a 6 megapixel image will certainly impact the output quality, as it's no longer a 6 megapixel image. For instance, if you crop half the image then what you're left with is a 3 megapixel image, that's a lot less resolution. As for the lens, I'm not sure how good the old 70-300mm non VR is, but keep this in mind, the higher the pixel density of the camera the harder the camera will be on lenses. Lens flaws that may not be present on lower pixel density cameras will all of a sudden be a lot more obvious when you place that lens on a high pixel density camera, like a D7000 for instance. That's why it makes no sense to shoot great camera bodies with les than stellar glass.

 

[Sirocco]

Thanks Trevor, why didn't I think of that, makes sense. I would guess then that the fishing eagle is coming in at around 2MP then, explains a lot. Do you think the D90 would show much more improvement? 12.3MP so this shot would have been around the 4MP mark. might have saved it for 8x6 print or computer only use. hmmmm...

I hear what your saying about lenses, thats why I questioned it. I think I will look more closely into getting the D90 body and see how my lens goes. I may have to invest in the later VR kit if the 70-300 does not perform.

G