bman212121
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 p.1 #3 · 60D Upgrade suggestions. | |
The first question I have is are you cropping your photos to get the images you want now?
When you use your two lenses are they always being used at the long end on your 60D? (200mm and 105mm respectively)
I'm asking those two questions first because it's important to help address the first main issue which is light gathering. The most important thing to understand is that any given lens will allow x amount of light through it, and there is nothing you can do to change / improve that. The limiting factor is the size of the hole in the front of the lens, and then if you are reducing the path through the lens using the aperture. When you use ISO, you are not increasing the gathered light, but trying to adjust the camera in a way to compensate. A newer body might have better "tricks" to read the light differently, but it's not actually doing anything to improve what you capture.
If you're already at 6400 ISO and wanting more, then you may want to consider improving light gathering. One way would be to get a faster lens, like a 135mm. With an F2 aperture you're getting a full stop improvement in light gathering. That's a fairly significant gain and would have a decent impact on your images. It obviously is going to come at the expense of zooming, which has it's own tradeoffs. The main issue is that if you have to crop the image, cropping is deleting gathered light, which will negatively impact the photo. But images that fill the frame at 135mm will look noticeably better.
The other main way to increase light gathering is using a bigger sensor. When you put an EF lens on a crop body, it is only making use of some of the lens. There is additional light being collected by the lens, but it has no where to go on APS-C. So there is additional light gathering being left on the table any time you use a crop sensor. If I compare your 60D to another body that is around that same age, the Canon 5D Mark III, the mark III has more than a full stop advantage in dynamic range. That is no doubt going to be recognizable in photos, and will help improve your photos quality. To give you some technical data, the 60D has a dynamic range of 4.68, the Canon R7 has dynamic range of 5.09, and the 5DIII has a DR of 5.89. What that means is that you have more room to improve contrast between the lightest and darkest part of the image, and even an old full frame is better than a modern crop body. Because of the additional light gathering there really isn't a way to make up that difference.
https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm
So my suggestion is a the long way of saying what AmbientMike already alluded to. Another APS-C sensor isn't going to solve the issue for you because even if you can push farther into the ISO, it's not going to help the root cause. A full frame body will help you significantly, or a faster prime lens. An R6 at 12800 ISO still has better dynamic range than an R7 does at 6400 ISO, and that's going to be important at your light levels. My personal take is you want to have around 5 stops of DR to get nice images, and using ISOs that deliver less than 5 stops is where images start to degrade significantly. (YMMV since everyone has their own threshold)
What that means in plain english to you:
Here is the last ISO I would generally deem acceptable on different cameras:
60D - ISO 5000
R7 - ISO 6400
5DIII - ISO 12800
R6 - ISO 12800
R5 - ISO 16000
R3 - ISO 20000
All of those ISOs should produce a similar dynamic range, which is important for your subject since there is going to be a significant contrast between lights and darks. When you start going past that you have to give up something, which usually means you lose details in the dark parts of the image. Stuff that wasn't captured can't be recovered, which is what happens when the dynamic range cannot cover the range that is being photographed.
To address the original point, a body that is geared for sports shooting. I think that most full frame choices would cover that with the obvious choice being an R6. A 5DIV is also going to be a good choice if you can find one for the right price used. That said the 60D isn't known for being fast, and almost any choice you come up with should improve on the auto focus capabilities.
EDIT: My post is already too long, but one thing I want to make more clear about crop vs full frame. Because of the different in 'crop factor', the field of view is different. In order to benefit from a full frame camera you need to have enough lens available to narrow the field of view to the same FOV as the crop camera. The most narrow a full frame can get is about 10 degrees at 200mm with the lens you have. On your crop camera that equates to about 120mm. What that means is that the area between 125mm - 200mm is the area where you will start to decline in benefit between a full frame and an APS-C camera. 125mm is the start of the decline and 200mm is the end. If you photograph something at 200mm on APS-C and fill the frame, and you photograph something on at 200mm on a full frame and crop it to the same FOV as the APS-C, you have effectively cut away all of the advantages of the full frame camera. To take full advantage of full frame you'd need to be taking photos in the 70 - 120mm area on your crop camera now. There is still an advantage of 200mm full frame + crop vs 150mm APS-C no crop, but if you're routinely taking photos in the 150 - 200mm range on your APS-C then you need a longer lens for the full frame camera to take advantage of it.
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