D90 - Time for upgrade, new lens, or both? International travel plans.

Hello,
I am planning two, 30 day trips in the next 18 months to Italy and Japan. While I have used my D90 plenty for travel around the US, more sporadically, I do not know if my future travel warrants an upgrade at this time. I haven't kept track of the latest with photography.


I primarily shoot landscapes, exploring cities , subways, street photography, and architecture outside and indoors. I dart around without a typical camera bag, a bit of just wandering around. I hardly carry a tripod and for these trips, only a Gorilla Pod. Everything is handheld or light pole supported shots. I wonder if an upgrade will improve low light indoor and night shots enough to warrant a camera body upgrade, or should I just buy better lenses?


I have a D90 with:
18-105mm AF-S DX ED VR f/3.5-5.6G (generation 1 I believe) as daily lens
50mm f/1.8D prime
35mm AF-S f/1.8G


I mostly carry my 18-105mm and 35mm on travel. However I find I need better low light performance on a wider lens. Especially given Italy's narrow streets and indoor wide cathedrals, should I purchase a wider lens and forgo the 35mm which is cropped too much anyway for indoors?


My options are the following with a preferred budget of $600 max lens, full price body upgrade if drastic upgrade, and maybe I'll scrape enough to get both if the wider lens is still important for Italy:
1) Just upgrade the body from D90 to D7500 and look for a sale in the next 18 months?
2) Only get a wide lens? (What suggestions for at max $600 and open to 3rd party options)
3) Do both? (Would the upgrade and new lens really worth the ~$1800+?)
4) Wildcard: Look for second hand, older 2010 - 2015 full frame body for the larger sensor and crop the photos with my DX lenses?

I have plenty of time to look out for flash sales in the next 18 months, but I'm trying to plan out ahead of time what to look out for.


Thank you!

dbo989 said:

Hello,
I am planning two, 30 day trips in the next 18 months to Italy and Japan. While I have used my D90 plenty for travel around the US, more sporadically, I do not know if my future travel warrants an upgrade at this time. I haven't kept track of the latest with photography.


I primarily shoot landscapes, exploring cities , subways, street photography, and architecture outside and indoors. I dart around without a typical camera bag, a bit of just wandering around. I hardly carry a tripod and for these trips, only a Gorilla Pod. Everything is handheld or light pole supported shots. I wonder if an upgrade will improve low light indoor and night shots enough to warrant a camera body upgrade, or should I just buy better lenses?


I have a D90 with:
18-105mm AF-S DX ED VR f/3.5-5.6G (generation 1 I believe) as daily lens
50mm f/1.8D prime
35mm AF-S f/1.8G


I mostly carry my 18-105mm and 35mm on travel. However I find I need better low light performance on a wider lens. Especially given Italy's narrow streets and indoor wide cathedrals, should I purchase a wider lens and forgo the 35mm which is cropped too much anyway for indoors?


My options are the following with a preferred budget of $600 max lens, full price body upgrade if drastic upgrade, and maybe I'll scrape enough to get both if the wider lens is still important for Italy:
1) Just upgrade the body from D90 to D7500 and look for a sale in the next 18 months?
2) Only get a wide lens? (What suggestions for at max $600 and open to 3rd party options)
3) Do both? (Would the upgrade and new lens really worth the ~$1800+?)
4) Wildcard: Look for second hand, older 2010 - 2015 full frame body for the larger sensor and crop the photos with my DX lenses?

I have plenty of time to look out for flash sales in the next 18 months, but I'm trying to plan out ahead of time what to look out for.


Thank you!

Click to expand...

First off welcome to the forum. The D90 is very old tech. I would not go for the D7500 at this time. That body has some limitations in many people's opinion. You really might want to look at the D7100 and maybe even a refurbished D7100. The prices have really gotten good on that body and it is a really great camera.

You do not want to buy a Full Frame body and use your DX lenses on it. Not a good option.

Buy a D7100 or possibly a D7200 but the D7200 does not offer that much of a upgrade over the D7100.

Welcome aboard. Enjoy the ride.

You might want to consider a D7100 or D7200 rather than the D7500, thus saving you some significant amount of money.

I would also suggest the[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X Lens (If you can still find one new).

This combination, coupled with the lenses you have, will give you a pretty good setup.

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As someone who shoots a lot in travel destination...90 countries so far and living in one of the most picturesque cities anywhere, I would suggest wide plus a flash, you never can have wide enough it seems for travel scenes. I sponsor and host many people traveling here and never heard someone express frustration over not having long enough focal lengths but almost every comments how they wished the brought wider.
The 18-105 is a very good walking around lens, surprisingly sharp and the most versatile range, and at the long end makes an impressive style of bokeh if the background is further than camera to subject.
There are a number of 3rd party Dx lenses that fit in your price range. I got, as my first UWA after getting the D90 when it was first released, a Sigma 10-20. Ir was about the cheapest lens with autofocus and delivered some very good images. BikerBrent mentioned the 11-16 Tokina which is a very nice lens, better than the Sigma, but also more expensive. Ultra-wide lenses are not thought of as useful for people shots but they can offer some interesting perspective without too much distortion if you shoot on axis with the mid-point of the subject, and level. Here is an example, shot only about 5 feet away from my subject, my GF on the roof of the art center next door to our apartment
So the Sigma is very useful and still gets used a lot. Mine is the cheaper f/4.5-5.6 version but now the only one in production is the more expensive f/3.5 constant aperture version, which is about $400. You can find used 4.5-5.6 versions for about $200. Used wide angles are often a good buy because they are not flagged every day like a mid range zoom is or how a short telephoto would be.
The next thing to buy is a good flash. It is more important to have good lighting than good lenses or camera, and it is the cheapest part of photography
A powerful very flexible flash fully compatible with Nikon's CLS flash system can be had for $99 that is comparable to the Nikon SB900 series at 6 times the price. I have 6 flash compatible flash units, 3 SB900 Nikon for about and 3 YN-568ex from Yongnuo. I used a SB900 on the photo about for fill flash due to shooting in harsh mid-day sun. When you learn low versatile higher power off camera flash can be, you will use it very often day or night.

Getting a good ultra wide lens and some flash will create a more noticeable improvement than upgrading bodies. The D90 is still a very effective camera and lass leader for long time. Mine has oveer 130,000 shots and has been lawless. My problem is getting it way from my GF who uses it often. I added a D7000 and D800 when they came out, each very competent but I have no interest in upgrading any thing but what matters to image quality: lighting. Lighting does not have to mean flash or strobes, can be a simple folding reflector, but if used effectively, your D90 with good light for the subject, will simply capture better images than a bigger fancier camera without that advantage. Most vacation photos are not very good due to poor light.

Shifting to Fx, if you really need to should not even be considered until you have the needed lenses. FX lenses cost a lot more, are much heavier so get used less often. Taking a bag with 25lbs of lenses and body does not encourage going out casually to take some snap shots. You D90 and the 35 1.8, or 18-105 are small and convenient to just have it with you a lot more often so you will have more opportunities for those happy bits of luck to stumble onto unexpected events.

Good travels and good shooting
Stan