What DSLR is best for low light/night photography?

[littlered]

Hi everyone! 

I'm in the market to buy my first DSLR camera, and I'm looking for one that will allow me to take long exposure shots and get a good clear picture in low light/or at night. Any suggestions? 

Thanks.

[cicopo]

What kind of things / scene are you trying to capture? Will you require it to have decent AF performance in the dark or will you take control of focusing duty? I think any modern DSLR can do up to a 30 sec exposure & longer if you use "bulb" mode so the choices may come down to other features wanted etc.

[Skirball]

Best?  Technically speaking, it’s a toss-up between the 1DX, 5d3 and 6D, depending on what “data” you look at.  Without quibbling over pixels it’s safe to say that all Canon’s full frame cameras are all very good at low light.  But usually when people come looking for “the Best” they really mean, “what’s good at a reasonable price”.  But as Cicopo said, all dSLRs are capable of long exposures.   The Rebel line is quite capable of doing what you describe.  And with good technique, and some basic noise reduction in post process, you can get results reasonably close to what you could with these other cameras which cost significantly more.

[TCampbell]

Only part of low light photography is the camera body... the other part is the lens.

The lenses have focal ratios listed on them.  For example... the "kit" lens that comes with most Rebel bodies is typically an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6.  That means it's a zoom lens that can zoom from 18-55, but the reason the focal ratio is expressed as a range instead of a single value is because the lowest focal ratio varies depending on the focal length chosen.  At 18mm it's able to do f/3.5.  At 55mm it can only do f/5.6 as it's lowest focal ratio.  (they can do higher focal ratios -- the values always represent the _lowest_ focal ratio available and that's what you ultimately want to know.)  

Lower focal ratios are better.

The focal ratio is simply the number of times that you can divide the diameter of the lens' "clear aperture" (the area through which the light can actually pass) into the focal length.  If you had a 100mm lens at it had a clear aperture that was 25mm across then that would be an f/4 lens because the 25 divides into 100 exactly 4 times.

But if you had a 100mm lens that had a 50mm wide clear aperture then that would be an f/2 lens because 50 divides into 100 twice.  

The lower the focal ratio, the more light it can collect when the shutter is open.  If the lens can collect more light then you can either use a faster shutter speed or use a lower ISO senstivity (which is always nice because high ISO senitivity values generate a lot of image "noise".

You haven't mentioned exactly what type of subjects you'll be shooting so it's hard to recommend anything specific.  

All currently marketed bodies are pretty good if paired with a good low-focal ratio lens (the standard kit zoom lens will not necessarily be good for low-light situations.)

I will say that the "full frame" bodies (6D, 5D III, and 1D-X) have a _very_ noticeable improvement in low-light.  This is because they have large sensors.  Large sensors mean that the "photo-sites" covering the sensors can each be larger.  Because they are physically larger, they are better at capturing photons of light.  So you do get a naturally performance boost by using a "full frame" camera.

If you give us a better idea of what you plan to shoot, we can perhaps recommend something a bit more specific.

[lurry]

What budget have you allocated for buying this camera? 

[lurry]

Something could probably be found here: http://thedigitalcamera.net/canon-rebel-t4i-vs-t5i-comparison/

[ebiggs1]

"What DSLR is best for low light/night photography?"

The simple answer, 1Dx