What difference will the body actually make?

I'm currently shooting with a Nikon D90 and I'm starting to get into portraits. I was thinking of upgrading my camera to a full frame body, but will it make a difference in the quality of my photos?

What lenses do you have? The lens you use make s a HUGE impact. Do you own a lighting system or a speedlight that will bounce flash? If you don't have these your money may be better spent investing there instead of the body. These items will grow with you into a bigger better body. Also do you shoot RAW? That allows all the info your sensor got to be processed by you in post. If you aren't doing that because of programs and not having them, that may be a good investment too. I am not a Nikon shooter but as far as I can tell about the cropped sensor is that it alters the field of view the lens has and makes the magnification go up. Like a 50mm on a cropped body gives you an 800 mm lens. That holds true for Nikon and almost any other brand of D-SLR. Photography has many aspects that affect the outcome, the body only being one of them.

This is a Canon link, but will give you an idea of what I am speaking about... www.photographytalk.com/forum/canon-came...7d-field-test#173272

The Canon 7D is 18 megapixels and a cropped sensor, the 5Dmii is a full frame 23 megapixel. This puts forth a very interesting argument. Hope this helped.

Probably not as much as internet chatter would have you believe. The differences are well documented. In the real world they don't seem as significant to me as they are hyped in reviews. I don't know anything about the work you are doing, but in general I'd consider new lenses and lighting to improve portrait photo quality before I worried too much about the body.

mj~shutterbugg wrote: What lenses do you have? The lens you use make s a HUGE impact. Do you own a lighting system or a speedlight that will bounce flash? If you don't have these your money may be better spent investing there instead of the body. These items will grow with you into a bigger better body. Also do you shoot RAW? That allows all the info your sensor got to be processed by you in post. If you aren't doing that because of programs and not having them, that may be a good investment too. I am not a Nikon shooter but as far as I can tell about the cropped sensor is that it alters the field of view the lens has and makes the magnification go up. Like a 50mm on a cropped body gives you an 800 mm lens. That holds true for Nikon and almost any other brand of D-SLR. Photography has many aspects that affect the outcome, the body only being one of them.

This is a Canon link, but will give you an idea of what I am speaking about... www.photographytalk.com/forum/canon-came...7d-field-test#173272

The Canon 7D is 18 megapixels and a cropped sensor, the 5Dmii is a full frame 23 megapixel. This puts forth a very interesting argument. Hope this helped.

I have a 24-120mm. I plan on buying a 50mm. I have a sb600, it's the only lighting I have at this time. I only shoot raw. Wow, so you are saying when I buy my 50mm, on my Nikon D90 I will get an 800mm? Damn, if that is the case why does anyone need to spend $$$$$ on telephoto lenses.

The difference in upper models is the build quality. The upper end cameras are metal as opposed to plastic, they are weather sealed, to an extent as such. Then there are features which may or, may not be relevant to improve images.

Corrina wrote: Wow, so you are saying when I buy my 50mm, on my Nikon D90 I will get an 800mm?

Typo. She meant 80mm.

Henry Peach wrote: Probably not as much as internet chatter would have you believe. The differences are well documented. In the real world they don't seem as significant to me as they are hyped in reviews. I don't know anything about the work you are doing, but in general I'd consider new lenses and lighting to improve portrait photo quality before I worried too much about the body.

Thank you. The camera I have now, is doing just fine. But since I wanted to start getting into portrait photography I started to wonder if I should consider a full frame. But, if lenses are more important, then I will focus on better quality lenses instead of a body. Thanks.

Thanks Matt, yes I meant 80mm. Me and my typos.

mj~shutterbugg wrote: Thanks Matt, yes I meant 80mm. Me and my typos.

Gotcha. I understand typos. Although that would be an awesome inexpensive way to get an 800mm. lol

If you are considering a full frame camera, make sure you buy lenses designed for FF. They will work with crops but ones designed for crops will not work with FF.
Unless you need really low light or large landscape shots, your current body is more than adequate.

Baydream wrote: If you are considering a full frame camera, make sure you buy lenses designed for FF. They will work with crops but ones designed for crops will not work with FF.
Unless you need really low light or large landscape shots, your current body is more than adequate.

Thanks for that tip.

Some adivce given to me when I started playing in photography was to upgrade the lenses before the body and never a truer word has been told.

Unless you are planning on blowing your inmages up to print you can get outstadning results with the majority of DSLR's on the market if you know how to use them, decent glass makes all the difference.

As has been said glass if king for images over the bodies. While you can use cheaper glass if you know its sweet spots having good glass gives you more flexibility for Depth of Field and still giving you quality images. Cheaper glass will suffer with too soft of images when narrowing the DoF.

Baydream wrote: If you are considering a full frame camera, make sure you buy lenses designed for FF. They will work with crops but ones designed for crops will not work with FF.
Unless you need really low light or large landscape shots, your current body is more than adequate.

That's not exactly true....With Nikon, when a lens designed for a "crop" sensor camera is used on a full frame model, the camera will sense this & what you get is a reduced resolution image...Thus a 12mp FX format Nikon camera when used with a DX lens will produce a 5mp image (plus a tinier image in the viewfinder...Best to always buy FX lenses in the off chance that you get a FX body at a later date...

Just buy yourself the Sigma 50 1.4

Suddenly your portraits on the D90 will get better.