We are looking to upgrade an old (ancient? 2006 Nikon D80) camera that is used for taking pictures at a conference (mostly for website). It is not mission critical photography, so value for money is very important. Which means I need to know what parameters to prioritize the selection on.
My initial thinking is that with conferences, high-ISO tolerance might be the most important thing for available-light shooting. Often, it is not possible to get close enough to the panel to use flash and even when it is, too many flashes will annoy people.
The second parameter, I guess, would be high enough megapixel count that would allow to take pictures from further away and then crop them after the fact for better composition.
Tripod and/or long composition set-up is not really an option.
It would also be good if the camera could take videos in a pinch. In that case, tripod could be fine. Portability is fairly important as conferences happen all over the world and overly heavy configuration could be a transportation/storage issue.
So, given this requirements, can I just pick up any recent camera and lens (e.g. anything is much better than D80) or is there specific comparison approach I should take?
The lens we have is AF-S Nikkor DX 18-200 1:3.5-5.6 G ED VR. Or the same bunch of symbols in other order :-). Basically a good zoom lens with image stabilization and reasonable aperture values.