Choosing The Right Camera For You: Budget, Experience and Style Considered
Whether you’ve been doing photography for years, or have never done photography before and are looking for a beginner’s shopping list, this post will provide you with the information you need to buy the best next camera for your needs.
Now, there are many factors that determine what camera you should be using. Two main factors are your experience level and your budget. A beginner is best off investing less money in case they do not completely commit to photography. An experienced photographer, however, needs not just the best camera but the right camera for their line of work.
Here’s a rough guide:
Beginner/no budget - Phone camera.
Now, let me set the record straight: it is my number 1 pet peeve when people using their phones think they are professional photographers. However, I have no issue with people using their phones to learn the basics of taking photos. Just about everybody and their grandmother own phones, and the cameras on them are getting better with each version.
The best camera is the one that you have with you, and in 90% of cases, that’s your phone. There are, however, lots of features that even the most expensive phones lack in terms of their photo-snapping abilities. I’ll discuss these later, and perhaps make an entirely separate post about them soon.
Stepping up/Small budget - point and shoots (compacts) or bridge cameras
Point and shoots are amazing first cameras. They share a lot of the strong points of phones: small, portable and easy to use. The main benefit of compacts, compared to phones, is that they have bigger sensors, wider apertures and actual zooms! The wider aperture of a point-and-shoot lens allows more light into the camera body, the larger sensor gives a bigger area to collect this light over. These factors combined give you much improved low-light performance over a phone's hole-punched size iris.
As for the zoom: a phone will “zoom” by cropping in further and further on an image, losing resolution and image quality in the process. Compacts, however, move the elements of their lenses in order to zoom, capturing a small part of the original frame with just as much of the sensor and just as many pixels. Another big benefit of small cameras is that they’re not intimidating, perfect for when you’re snapping photos in public.
Bridge cameras are essentially an all in one version of a DSLR, as they don’t give you the option of interchangeable lenses. The typical bridge camera lens, however, often has a vast range of focal lengths, making it perfect for tourists.
Imagine: you’re trying to see all the sites in Rome in just a few days. You don’t want to be stopping to change lenses all the time (unless you’re a serious travel photographer) you want to take photos as you’re on the go. Bridge cameras are perfect for this. Typically more powerful than compacts, but still not the full size of a DSLR, they give a good balance of practicality and professional results. Oh, and budget.
Getting serious/Medium budget - Entry-Level DSLRs or mirrorless
This is where we enter the realm of real glass. DSLR and mirrorless camera bodies give you access to interchangeable lenses, and there’s a whole lot of lenses to pick from. This new realm of mix and matching bodies and glass does introduce a new issue: what do you invest the most into?
The answer to that question varies depending on the type of photography that you do more of, for example:
a sports photographer needs a camera body that can fire off lots of shots per second, but the lens doesn’t have to be insane, a decent 70-300mm gets me close enough to the action.
For a portrait photographer, however, it’s not crucial that they get many shots per second, but it is important that they have a good lens, or multiple good lenses, in order to get those sharp headshots and buttery smooth bokeh.
At this point in my own photography story, a 14-year-old me begged my parents for a DSLR, mostly because I didn’t know what the hell a mirrorless was back then, and it did me well. In fact, the portfolio I built from using that camera landed me my current job. That camera, a Canon 760D and the 18-55mm kit lens it came with, still get used today. The flip-out screen makes it handy for vlogging.
Now, of course, mirrorless cameras are serious competitors. Canon’s M50 isn’t crazily priced for the performance that it offers. I was shocked the first time a friend handed me their M50 because it was so light. I nearly dropped it. Better yet, I was shocked the second time a friend handed me their M50 (that time I made sure to hold that one by the lens, much safer). Both M50 owners I know would highly recommend it, and they both use them a lot despite owning more powerful cameras, as it’s just so easy to carry.
Semi-pro and above/big budget - Professional DSLRs and Mirrorless
“Big Budget” is an open-ended category, it goes from roughly £800 ($1,000) and beyond. This range, like the body/lens budget balance problem discussed under the medium budget section, is very dependent on what type of photographer you are as some camera bodies are orientated for specific uses.
To use my own example, I bought a Canon 7D mark ii just before Christmas 2019. The body features an array of autofocusing modes to suit different ways that subjects may move, relative to yourself. It also has a machine-gun-speed shutter that can fire off 10 shots per second and write them onto CF cards at insane write speeds. In case you didn’t guess by now, most of these features are no good to studio portrait photographers. This is an action body, great for a sports photographer like myself and also suitable for wildlife.
A counterexample to this would be the 5DsR, which has a huge megapixel count but only fires 5 shots per second. As is the case with many large pixel count cameras it doesn’t have the best low-light performance, despite being a full-frame. This means you would typically end up using longer exposures or wider apertures to avoid noisy images. The monstrous file sizes produced by this camera would also take longer to transfer onto memory cards. This is a studio body, perfect for use with flashes, where you can flood your scene with light. (A great photographer who uses a 5DsR is the beauty photographer Tamara Williams)
Onto mirrorless cameras: many of these, especially the higher-end Sony models, are rocking huge pixel counts. The lighter build of these cameras also makes it more practical for the serious travel photographer. Mirrorless bodies also tend to boast better video-recording capabilities, making them a big hit in recent years with YouTube creators.
The problem with mirrorless bodies being so light and compact, however, is that the sensor suffers as a result of downsizing. A physically smaller sensor provides a narrower area over which to collect light and they face the potentially noisy, grainy and downright ugly fate that is poor low light performance.
Conclusion
Picking the correct camera for yourself is no easy task, and you should do the research. Find people who have the cameras you’re considering and get their opinions of it. This is where being part of photography clubs and forums comes especially in handy, and you can even buy second-hand cameras from people in your club who are upgrading their kit.
Consider the qualities of a camera that are most important to your photographic niche. Personally, I’d say to get the best one you can afford as you’ll be using it for years to come.
If you’re looking for more info, feel free to comment on this post, drop me an email, or get in contact through my social media.
Keep Shooting,
