Glass or body?

[tenohfive]

For awhile I've been looking to upgrade both body and one of the lenses to kit more suitable. I've managed to pick out what I want, but without having that much money to chuck into my gear I'm having to be a bit selective about what I get first and what I wait a bit longer for.

Now I've currently got a Canon 400D with the 18-55 IS II kit lens, 50mm f1.8 and a Tokina 11-16mm f2.8. The 400D isn't bad but does suffer from noise, and I don't know whether it's body or lens but the AF is sometimes slightly off when used with the prime for shots of the kids etc. It's also got a knackered hotshoe that I've tried fixing and failed and isn't worth the cost of getting Canon to fix.
The prime works well for family photography and to that end I probably use it most.
The Tokina I love to bits, comes in handy for indoors people photography but is mostly used for landscape stuff, the sorts of thing I enjoy doing. And it's good for astro, something I'm playing about with more.
The kit lens barely gets used because it just isn't that sharp and I'm rarely happy with the results. It also doesn't have as much reach as I'd like.

So I want to get a 70D as a new body - better noise and AF performance and the screen looks handy.
To replace the kit lens I want the 15-85mm based on it's reputation for being sharp and for the extra reach. I don't need a full on tele, just something sharp that I can use to isolate landscape scenes and as a walkabout lens.

I'm going to get both sooner or later, but is there a compelling reason (new body/lens releases pushing price down for example) to get one or other? I'll be buying second hand for both.

[DibblyDobbler]

Hmm - well normally accepted wisdom would be to go for glass over a body upgrade but given the choice you have I would go to the 70D if it was me. I have had 2 15-85s and there was nothing wrong with them but equally I wasn't blown away and ended up not using them very often.

As a controversial third option - what about going for it with a second hand 6D? Wouldn't be much more and if you are keen you'll probably end up going FF at some point anyway...

[tenohfive]

Ruled that out FF when deciding on the body as replacing the glass will cost too much. I'll go that way at some point but for now I'm happy with APS-C.

[JustinP1]

tenohfive said:

The 400D isn't bad but does suffer from noise, and I don't know whether it's body or lens but the AF is sometimes slightly off when used with the prime for shots of the kids etc.

You might be finding that with the prime, you are possible selecting wider apertures than you would with the zoom. The downside of that is that the distance from you that is perfectly in focus becomes more and more slim.

You'll find, for example, reasonably close up, at say f1.8 if you focus on someone's nose, their face will be slightly soft.

If you are photographing kids - who move around (the little blighters) - you may find that you get more 'keepers' stopping down to f4.0 or f5.6 and that's worth losing the effect of extreme background blur for.

F2.0 and better has it's use - I've got some fantastic shots of my daughter in gardens etc at longer distances where the extreme depth gives the effect of 'stopping time' and focussing the eye only onto the subject.


I've had a 400D, 60D and now have a 6D. I have to say that the noise improvement between the 400D and 60D was relatively minor, compared to the jump to the 6D which is very noticeable.

As an off the wall suggestion, if you like the effect of primes, they of course let more light in, and thus allow you to shoot with less noise. Why not try the Canon f1.8 85mm prime?

[tenohfive]

I'd love the 85mm f1.8 but the main use of the 15-85mm will be landscape work - isolating scenes mostly. And walkaround duty. So I really need a tele. And in that focal range the only other lens of consideration is the 17-55mm, which I gather is a touch sharper but I'd then need something from 55mm+ for more reach (I'm not convinced the 55-250mm is worthy of consideration) - only really the 70-200 f4L which is £400, and still leaves a focal gap...it gets messy. I've thought things back and forth and I think I've covered most of the bases in coming to the conclusion that for what I'll use them for the 70D and 15-85mm are a reasonable combo.

(I am still open to something else mind, it's entirely possible I've missed something.)

Edited by tenohfive on Tuesday 30th June 19:18

[LongQ]

I have not crunched the numbers but the 600D (or 650D) might be a useful body upgrade for you favoured image types and still leave enough over for a lens enhancement purchase.

I have a 400D and a 600D and have not touched the 400D for quite a while. (I have other cameras as well which may on part explain that!)

The 600D offers a lot of additional resolution (compared to the 400D) and better noise capability. No, it's not the best body available now - it's 4 years old after all - but it can offer a lot more in the right circumstances.

I bought my 400D to use with old FD manual lenses. The 600D had the same intent but with extra pixels and a modern (manual) wide angle lens available along with the older FD fit units.

It works well, even for action shots so long as I get the focus right and don't expect it to perform like a D1x if using AF!