upgrade body or faster lens?

[Turbonetics]

Hi I am a relative newbie in the world of dslr. I currently own a canon 40d and a tamron 17-50 f2f.8. On a recent trip overseas and during an indoor event, I felt hampered by the iso available to me on my 40d. Yes I was also using a flash at that time. Even though I was using a flash, I felt majority of the pictures turn out grainy due to the high iso and there were motion blur as well.

My question is that would a better and newer body like the 7d help me solve my problem or a faster lens like the sigma 3mm f1.4?

Thanks in advance.

if ISO is your concern,then upgrade body.

 

[denzelwng4]

better question your skills first before you upgrade, sometimes you intend to buy wrong gears bcoz of ur skill level...

 

[meganut]

My company uses 7D + 5DM2 (company camera).. Yup the 7D has 19AF points and the 5DM2 only 9... the 5DM2 is slow in AF.. we usually use it to shoot video, in manual focus of cos... photowise usually we use the 7D cos it performs better and faster in terms of focusing.. of cos one is full frame and one is crop.. not talking about image quality or the full/crop body etc the Mark 2 is good in terms of image quality etc etc.. but regards to the performance of AF, the mark 2 is abit annoying... of cos the high ISO on the 5DM2 is much much better...

i will not touch on other camera brands in details in case this discussion turns to something else but yup there are some other brands like S or P can give you alot more features more value for less dollar... you can get entry level camera with cleaner images at high iso, and fast fps.. alot more bang for the buck and its only their entry level...but thats another story...

i might be wrong, BUT i believe taking photos on a 1.4 at wide open, you might get blurry corners, might not be ideal for all situations though a 1.4 lens is good to have if the situation arises for it

Hmm.. I also love doing night street photography..

Correct me if I'm wrong, but assuming you want to prevent motion blurs, and you don't use flash, then I think you'd need both. A body with better ISO handling, and a fast lens.

No easy way on your back or your bank account, but if I were you, I'd go with something like a 5D2 instead of 7D (Sorry I'm a Canon user, so not familiar with models from other brands). Add a good 50mm F/1.4 lens, and you will be good to go. (Take note that AF on 7D is newer, so I assume 7D has better AF compared with 5D2).

 

[Shahmatt]

Do you shoot in RAW format and post process? Sometimes you can get better quality images this way.

Shooting in low light will always lead to some noise in images. Are you trying to freeze motion? If not use a lower ISO and tripod. Consider getting a convenient tripod like the gorillapod or chinabrand equivalent (from Mustafa). Or use the string and bolt method:
Stabilize Your Camera for $1 with a Washer, Bolt, and String

 

[nitewalk]

Any lens faster would be a prime. But prime may not be for everyone. I used to use prime and liked it, but now I don't, and it depends a lot on what u want to shoot. Maybe as some say TS is trying to shoot street, then that's fine. But I'm not sure if TS has gone thru a day of shooting and is comfortable with using only one focal length?

 

[limwsv]

To add on, if your frame at that point in time at e.g. 35mm/2.8 is metered at a shutter speed of say, 1/15 sec you will get handheld shake. Using a f/1.4 will give u 4x shutter speed I.e. 1/60, which would greatly negate camera shake at that focal length.

The guideline for slowest shutter speed before handshake sets in is about (1/FL) sec. Just a guideline thou, don't take it wholesale. Cheers.

To add to the add on, there's a minimum handheld speed which nothing can save you from. Anything shoot slower than 1/30 second will requires some form of stablization to get a sharp picture.