A Few Ideas

    In my last post I indicated that I had a few more ideas for dealing with potential weaknesses or shortcomings in your camera. I started off buy suggesting the use of a tripod and fast aperture lenses. Another solution I may or may not have suggested was learning how to use flash guns properly, to overcome low light conditions, but in such a way that the light looks natural.

    What is the issues that you are dealing with are not light related, such as not having the hard buttons you want to quickly change settings. There are times when you use entry level DSLRs, such as the Nikon D3000 or D5000 when you might wish that they had hard buttons for changing ISO and white balance. That being said, unless you are in a situation where these settings need to be changed on the fly a lot, buying a higher end camera just for those buttons may not be a wish choice. The low end Nikon cameras do have a function button (self-timer button), which will allow you to set several options, including white balance and ISO sensitivity, as it's function. Canon's Rebel cameras do have hard buttons for those functions, so that is not an issue for users of those models. Some Pentax and Sony cameras have the same problem that entry level Nikon cameras have, but generally speaking they have assignable function buttons as well.

    Most of the issues I've seen people talk about is resolution, buttons and low light as reasons for wanting to upgrade there cameras. In the past few posts I've addressed those issues. Although the solutions may not be ideal, there are many times when upgrading your camera is not going to make enough of a difference to help based on how the user uses their camera. For sports or fast action photography, there is no way to overcome slow frame rates of entry level models, which range in the 3-4FPS. If your camera's auto focus system cannot handle the speed your subject moves there is not much you can, other than try and improve your ability to track the subject, which is half the battle anyway.

    In such cases stepping up to a camera like the D90 (4.5FPS) or Canon 50D (6FPS) can make a big difference. That being said, both Canon and Nikon are in the midst of an upgrade cycle for advanced amateur camera gear, both the D90 and 50D are due to be upgraded in the next few months, so you might want to wait as prices on the current models will drop once new models are released. Not to mention that the new models might be very attractive in and of themselves.