What camera should I buy (as a beginner)
(This is for people who have no experience with cameras)
I get asked this a lot.
A huge question.
And not the main question.
Before you ask this question you need to answer several others.
What type of photography will you be focusing on?
Cameras are awesome but they do require a level of technical ability — will you be shooting nature, street, landscape, macro for example, having some kind of focus helps you decide what you need.
All of these can be taken using something more basic, if you’re not too fussed about having all the lenses and learning the technical side of things.
How much technical do you want?
Are you coming from no camera knowledge or some, do you think having something more basic to start will help you bridge your way to something more?
Bridge cameras are how I started on my journey, a Fuji Finepix (some numbers or other) a few years back, it helped me take standard shots of lots of things and work out what I needed for what I really wanted to do.
But if you want to get started on the technicals, it’s worth it, the way I did it was practice, practice, practice, being around people that understood things so you can ask them, play about with it and obvs, Google and YouTube is your friend.
Do you want to have interchangable lenses and why?
Rudra Chakraborty — Unsplash
The lenses, in my opinion (and it’s just my opinion) are the most important part. You can spend any amount of money on the camera body, from DSLR, mirrorless to full frame or something as wild as the Leica SL2 (at a mere £12k) 😮.
Personally, my photography journey took me from bridge to DSLR, then mirrorless (dabbled in film) (so far), never owned a camera over £2k but the amount of lenses I’ve had over my time have definitely amounted to way more than that.
Having most bases covered is how I roll.
Not specialising in one specific thing, I enjoy having a selection to choose from depending on mood and circumstances.
50–200mm — something I can shoot long distance with (I’d like something longer — soon) so I’m not up in people’s faces on the street, high up stuff and landscape depending on the circumstances.
50mm because it’s always worth having this in your lens arsenal to capture some lovely depth of field.
35mm for street, landscape, for your wider needs is always nice to have as well.
These are my staples.
I’ve also just started getting excited about lenses like Laowa manual lenses — the one I have is 33mm f0.95, it’s a beast, and loves some closer up stuff like cars and gives amazing depth of field.
These lenses are mostly all available for all the bigger brands (Fujifilm, Nikon, Canon, Sony etc) and come in a range of prices, new / secondhand / refurbished etc, just like the camera bodies.
— — —
So the moral of the tale is always consider what you’ll be shooting keep in mind what you need and why, then you can answer what camera you need.
— — —
Thank you for reading! ✌️ Follow me on Instagram.