Buy or Rent... what to do?

[Jono]

Hello,

I'm going on a photography course to Skye in late December/early November.
I currently have a 600D, and my landscape lens of choice is a Tokina 11-16. I've had some pretty decent results with it.

Back in February when lensesforhire had a 50% sale, I hired a 6D and an 16-35 F4 L lens (and some other stuff), but i got some great results with that combination, sharpness wise...

As for filters I have a big/little stopper and some 100mm kood grads. They have a bit of a blue tint to them, but nothing that can't be fixed a bit with LR.


I would like to do skye justice, so I'm wondering if I should hire a camera/lens for that week at 100% prices, which works out at about £250. Which... i guess is a lot... but I might get some awesome images with them, so perhaps worth it.

Or just bite the bullet and sell my 600D with all its lenses and get a 6D with say the 16-35 and 24-105, then replace my 70-300 if/when i can afford it.


Things that annoy me about the 600D:
1) Autofocus is pretty awful - 9 point I think, none of which are cross type
2) ISO performance - anything over 400 is soooo noisy
3) Image quality is never that great, compared to better stuff... but then I did only buy it as an entry into DSLR land and I've learned a lot with it.

Things that annoy me about the 6D option
1) Autofocus is still pretty limited. only one cross type point and does it have only 11 points total? (I could be wrong here)
2) No flippy out screen - I really like this on the 600D.
3) I will have only one or two lenses. I currently have a 11-16, 18-35, 50, 70-300 with the 600.
4) The display for how long the shutter's open in bulb mode is only on the top LCD - not on the rear LED like it is on the 600. Not a massive gripe, though.



Or, do I ditch Canon completely and get a Nikon D810 - the DR of this seems to be amazing - it's incredibly what detail you can rescue from shadows. I've only had a play with one raw file from a D810 and it absolutely pees all over even what the 6D can achieve.

I know nothing about Nikon lenses though...

I mostly shoot landscapes, at the moment... because the 600D in my hands seems to be not terribly good for anything that moves.

 

[D.P.]

Nikon are like Canon lens, except are black with a sexy gold bling ring, non of that dirty grey and cheap red. Seriously, on FF, there is basically no difference. There is the odd lens that 1 has that the other doesn't, e.g. nikon has the amazing 300mm f/4.0 PF, Canon the very cool 17mm T/S.



I think you have to think of budget, going from renting some gear to buying a whole D810 setup is quite a difference. Saying that when moving form crop to FF it is a perfect time to switch systems, none of your canon lenses you will really want to keep on FF (50mm OK, but they are so cheap).



I will give you another option: D800. It is very similar to a D800 in almost every way but can be had way cheaper, especially second hand. D810 has 0.5stop more DR at ISO 64, no AA filter (the D800E also doesn't), and the D810 is slightly faster but I have never once felt my D800 was slow, even in continuous shooting tracking birds firing off dozens of shots.

A second hand D800 + Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8 VC is a formidable landscape setup.
Nikon have truly excellent f/1.8 primes, You can get 20mm f/1.8, 28mm f/1.8, 35mm f/1.8 (FX), and the 50 and 85 of course. The 240120mm f/4. is like canon's you compromise a bit to get versatility relative to the 24-70mm f/2.8 .

Edit; also check what 5Dmk3s are going for second hand. The sensor is the same as the 6D but you get great Autofocus.

 

[Jono]

Cheers