This question, or some version of it, accounts for probably 30% of the questions posted to the photography boards that I participate in. Every person has some slight variation to their request, but it still comes down to basically this question. What camera should I buy?
First, a disclaimer. I am writing based on my own personal experience. The specifications listed for the different cameras come from Nikon. I have shot Nikon since the 35mm days. I’ve been shooting Nikon digitals for about 4 years. I am a hobby photographer, not a professional. I have not been compensated in any way by anyone to write this. (Though I’m open to it. Nikon...) I’m writing it because I enjoy sharing information almost as much as I enjoy taking photos.
Second, I want to share a quote from Ansel Adams. It is one that resonates with me and I think will add context to the rest of this. “You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.” I include this quote here because it’s a much more eloquent way of saying something I’ll say in different ways throughout this article. It’s not the camera that makes a great picture; It’s the person behind the lens.
Lastly, this is a living document. I will be updating it and making changes periodically as I gain new experience and learn new things.
Jumping from your phone’s camera
Most people who ask this question are wanting to do more with taking pictures than they can do with a phone camera. Even a modern phone camera, with all of it’s resolution and fancy software and tricks, is inferior to a modern DSLR or mirrorless camera. When it comes right down to it, the physical size of a phone camera sensor is a limiting factor. Having the option of changing the optics (lenses) is one of the most common features that people want and you just can’t put that in a phone. By moving to any dedicated camera system you will see a noticeable improvement in image quality.
Where to start?
One of the first questions you should be asking yourself is: What is it that I want to do? Is there a limitation with my current camera, or, is there something else keeping me from what I want to achieve? If you can’t answer these questions, you should probably just stop here until you can. Your camera is likely to sit around collecting dust. These questions will also help answer the question of what gear you want. Note, I’ve said want in this paragraph, not need. There will be times where you need a specific feature, but most of the time it’s more like “it would be desirable” to have a certain feature or gadget. The best news is that you don’t need to have a huge budget to make the jump.
How do I choose which camera to buy?
As I mentioned before, I’m a Nikon guy. Many of my perspectives and recommendations are going to be Nikon centric. However, until I get to the section titled “Let’s get more Nikon specific”, I will try to keep this generic. Any modern camera from any brand will take good, better-than-your-phone, photos out of the box. This is one of the places where your personal preference rules.
Here are four specific things that I suggest you do to help you answer this question.
- Set a budget. This one should be obvious. You can’t spend money you don’t have. You don’t need a huge budget. I’d plan on an initial spend of at least $250 if you’re looking at used gear. For new gear, a beginners camera kit is going to start around $400. It’s a great place to start and will take better pictures than your phone, even in automatic mode. If you’ve got a bigger budget ($800+), it gets a bit more complicated. In general, with a larger budget, favor spending extra on glass not a fancier body. I’ll write more on this in later sections. You should also plan for another $50 to $100 of accessories such as a memory card, a bag and a UV filter for each lens. But avoid the package deals on new gear. The accessories they include are mostly junk.
- Get to the camera shop and put hands on the cameras you are considering. In my opinion, nothing can replace this step. The best camera to take any picture is the one that you have with you. If you don’t like how much the camera weighs or how it feels in your hands, the ergonomics, etc., are you going to carry it with you or will it just sit in the bag on a shelf? And yes, with COVID going on this is more difficult to do, but this camera is likely a long-term, multi-hundred (or thousand) dollar investment. So take the right precautions and go do this.
- Try it out, even if you don’t know what you’re doing yet. Hold the camera. Try the menus. Push the buttons. Change lenses. Even if you don’t yet understand how changing a setting will affect the photo, make note of how many steps it takes to change the setting. White balance is a good example.
- If you can, rent one. If not, make sure you can return it. Narrow it down to a couple of cameras. See if they rent those and rent one. If they don’t rent the model you are looking at, find out what the return policy is.
Should I buy a fancier model?
My default answer to this is no. Having a fancier car doesn’t make you a better driver. A better oven doesn’t make a better cake. A more advanced camera doesn’t take better (more interesting) photos. Having more features adds another layer of complexity to an already complex subject. In my experience having extras can be distracting to the creative process. Having a technically better photo doesn’t make me want to look at it more. Composition, perspective and personal style are what make photos interesting and what makes me want to look at them. When it comes to gear, lenses will get you far more bang for the buck than any camera body. The exception to this is if there is a specific feature you KNOW you will use. If there is, then consider spending the extra money.
An example would be time lapse. During a recent discussion talking about two different beginner cameras, I recommended the person stay with the less expensive model. That was until they mentioned in a comment that time lapse was something they were interested in. In this case, it made more sense to pay the extra $200 to get this feature built into the body rather than needing to buy an accessory later on.
One last thought here before we move on. Remember, photographers have been taking amazing photos since the 1800’s. They didn’t have any of the modern conveniences that we have today. It’s about the photographer not the gear.
What about post-processing?
Along the lines of getting fancier pictures, I want to mention post-processing. This question is one of many that often provokes a more emotional debate. One side says something to the effect of “photoshop made that picture, not you”. The other side says post is just another part of the creative process. Both answers are right.
One of the rules of photography that you’ll see talked about frequently is “get it right in the camera”. This is good advice and you should do your best to get it right in the camera. However, there’s something that I have started to notice more frequently in photography. A huge part of the wow factor in many modern photographs comes from post-processing. It’s not so much the camera, the lens or even the photograph as it is the photographer's personal style brought out by their post process. To me this makes sense and I believe it is the natural evolution of the art. When you look back at film photography, most noteworthy photographers insisted on developing their own film. That was an important part of their style and their personal creative signature. But, even with amazing post processing software and skills, the more you get right in the camera, the better the results.
New vs. Used Gear
This is also a really common question, and again this is one where personal preference plays a bigger role. I prefer to buy my bodies new and buy my lenses used. But, there’s nothing wrong with used bodies or new lenses. Any body that’s been released in the last 5 years or so is going to be very capable and produce beautiful results. If you are just starting out, I suggest extra caution be taken when buying used gear from classified type ads. If you have a “photo friend” get their opinion on the gear. With Nikon’s consumer cameras, if you go back much further than 5 years, you can run into compatibility issues with lenses and you’re getting far lower resolution sensors. Specifically some of the older cameras aren’t compatible with the most recent lenses and likely won’t be with future lenses.
Different brands and technologies
Now it’s time to get more technical. First, one more disclaimer. My target audience for this article is beginners, not professionals or others that really dig into the science and technical details. As such, I am intentionally keeping this simple. There are a lot of different options out there related to the technology of a camera. The big three are, in no specific order:
- Brand
- Sensor type (Full-frame and APS-C, among others)
- DSLR or mirrorless
One thing you’ll see as you get into photography is there’s almost always a trade-off. For example, you can get a faster shutter speed by increasing the ISO, but the trade-off is you get extra noise. The same thing applies with these technologies and brands.
Brand
The big 3 brands today are Canon, Nikon and Sony. When it comes to the consumer cameras, I don’t feel like any one of these has a clear advantage. When I chose Nikon it was because I shot it back in the 35mm days and most of my family that still shoots uses Nikon. The other reason was one I mentioned before. Nikon cameras just feel right in my hands. I like their interface. I like their color processing. Bottom line, I like my results.
The one objective differentiator with brands is lens availability. Canon and Nikon have been in this business for years longer than Sony. This makes for an abundance of used lenses out there for both. Canon has used different mounts over time and I’m not very familiar with them, so if you go Canon I’m not much help. Nikon has used the same physical lens mount for over 50 years, the F-mount. You might have to use an old Nikon lens in 100% manual mode, but with the right body you could use an F-mount lens from the 1960’s on a modern Nikon digital body. My favorite 50mm lens is the AF-D 50mm f/1.8 that’s been around since 2002.
When it comes to the images themselves, that’s very subjective. On paper, all three brands are fairly evenly matched, class-to-class and generation-to-generation. (i.e. consumer vs. consumer level bodies.) Several months ago I saw a screaming deal on a Sony a6000. It’s a camera I’ve read a lot of good press on. If you’ve been looking into cameras lately, I’m sure you’ve seen that too. So I decided to give it a try and see if I was missing out on something. At the end of the day, the only thing that really impressed me was that it fit in my coat pocket. I’m not saying it’s a bad camera. It’s decent and definitely takes better pictures than a phone. And for many, that’s enough. Again, it’s subjective. The other thing I disliked when deciding whether or not to keep the Sony is that there seems to be about a 20% surcharge just because it’s Sony compatible.
Sensor Type
The two sensor types that the big 3 use in their mirrorless and DSLR lines are Full-Frame (FF) and APS-C, also commonly called crop sensor. The third common sensor type is the Micro Four Thirds used by Fuji, Olympus and others. There are still other sensor types out there and people who love them, but I don’t have any experience with them. With Nikon, the two sensors are branded FX for full-frame and DX for APS-C. From a technical standpoint the difference is the physical size of the sensor. Full-frame is physically larger than APS-C. There are other differences from one generation of sensors to another such as resolution, ISO sensitivity and more. Sensors are a place where newer is generally better, at least on paper. However, in practice unless you jump multiple generations of sensors, you would likely have to be shooting in specific situations, or printing on larger formats to see much difference.
The battle among photographers between full frame and crop-sensor cameras is akin to your favorite sports rivalry. It’s an emotionally charged battle and your answer is the right one for you. Taking the emotions out of it, both types of sensors are very capable. Just like the discussion with having a fancier camera, the real question you should ask yourself here is, what will meet my needs? Each format has strengths. In my opinion as far as image quality goes, the current generation of sensors are on-par with one another. Here are a few differences and trade-offs between APS-C and FF.
- Cost of the glass. FF lenses literally use more glass in the lens and are generally at least twice as expensive as equivalent APS-C lenses. However, many commonly used lenses, such as the 70-200 f/2.8 are only made for FF. You can use FF lenses on APS-C cameras, but generally you’ll get better results matching type-to-type.
- Lens size and weight. Having more glass affects the weight of the lenses. FF lenses will generally be larger and heavier than equivalent APS-C lenses. FF is also often considered “professional-grade” and will use more durable materials, i.e. metal vs. plastic. This also increases weight.
- Body physical size/weight. Full-frame bodies will generally be larger and heavier than an APS-C camera.
- Bigger sensor, better depth of field. Full-frame’s larger sensor tends to produce better results with shallow depth-of-field shots. If you are going to do a lot of very short depth-of-field work, this might be a deciding factor for you. I talk a bit more about depth-of-field in the lenses section later on.
- Less noise. Full-frame also generally creates less noise in low light. However, the latest APS-C sensors and image processors have closed this gap quite a lot. For many people, the difference will be negligible.
- Crop factor. APS-C’s crop factor works in your favor if you expect to shoot a lot of telephoto (long distance) shots. Think wildlife, birds, etc. Crop factor is difficult to explain without writing a whole other paper. In the simplest of terms, it’s like getting extra zoom.
At the end of the day in the hands of a photographer that knows how to use them, a high quality lens paired with a high quality camera will get high quality results.
DSLR vs. Mirrorless
The SLR (single-lens reflex) design dates back to the 1930’s. The earliest digital SLR (DSLR) cameras date back to the mid-1980’s. Consumer type DSLR’s have been around since the late 1990’s. A DSLR camera bounces the light coming through the lens off of a mirror, into a prism, and that is what the photographer sees in the optical viewfinder (OVF). This is also where a DSLR’s autofocus system lives. When the image is taken, the mirror flips out of the way, the shutter does its job, and the mirror moves back into place. It is the same basic design that goes back all those years. The mirror is why the photographer’s view is interrupted for a moment when the picture is taken.
Mirrorless is a relatively new technology that uses the same optical designs, but the image is focused on the sensor full-time. The autofocus on a mirrorless is part of the sensor, and why mirrorless is generally better at video. The image is then processed by the camera and shown on either an electronic viewfinder (EVF) or the screen on the back of the camera.
There are a number of advantages to mirrorless. The main one is that you can see how changes to the exposure and other settings are affecting the image in real-time. But, this also leads to the main disadvantage, battery life. Because the camera is constantly processing the image, it uses up the battery much quicker. Mirrorless cameras are generally lighter weight, physically smaller and are better at video. The other downside to mirrorless is that the selection of lenses is smaller, especially in the Nikon world. DSLR’s still shine in the autofocus and low-light arenas, but mirrorless is closing the gap here.
The battle between DSLR and mirrorless is very much like the battle between FF and crop sensors. They both work extremely well and take great pictures. Personally I prefer the DSLR because of the optical viewfinder. It’s just more natural to me. And the larger grips are more comfortable in my hands. But my Z50 continues to grow on me.
One last note on this topic. There are people who like to preach that DSLR is dead or at least dying. I would beg to differ, with the Nikon D780 to back it up. I believe that much of Nikon’s focus with lens development will be on the Z-mount moving forward, but not all. Third-parties will continue to support the F-mount. And there’s tons of F-mount on the used market. So DSLR is far from dead. If anything, also as evidenced by the D780, technology that was developed to help mirrorless perform better will make its way into DSLR bodies. Total win-win.
Lenses
I know this is a bit of a detour, but I think now is the best time to talk lenses. Some of this is Nikon specific, but bear with me. At the moment, according to one source I trust, there are over 300 F-mount lenses out there. Having said that, I’m going to do my best to keep this section brief. Even without talking specific lenses, this could easily turn into an entirely separate article. But I also think that having some basic information is absolutely necessary. The two terms you need to understand when buying lenses are: focal length (usually in mm) and aperture (usually noted as f-stop or f/x.x).
Here is an example of how you would see a lens’s specifications listed. “AF-P DX NIKKOR 70-300mm f/4.5-6.3G ED VR” Every letter here means something to Nikon. The focal length is the 70-300mm part. The f/4.5-6.3 is the maximum aperture (how wide the aperture can open). The rest of it relates to the series/version and features of the lens and is Nikon specific.
Focal length determines your field of view or how much you can see. Focal lengths can be fixed (a prime lens) or variable (a zoom lens). The shorter the focal length, the wider the view. The longer the length, the narrower the view. What you should understand right now is the bigger the number is, the further away you can be and still fill the entire frame with your subject. For example, you can use any lens to take a picture of a bird. If you want the bird to fill the entire frame, you want a longer lens. The longer the lens, the further away you can be. On the other hand, if you want to take a picture of a sweeping landscape that happens to have a flock of birds in it, you want something much shorter.
A lens’s aperture serves the same purpose and functions very similarly to the pupil of your eye. It controls how much light is let into the lens by opening and closing. It also controls another VERY important part of the photograph, the depth of field. Depth of field is how much of the depth of the photo is in focus. The best examples I can think of to describe depth of field is what you commonly see in portraiture. The person is in focus, but the background isn’t. That is the function of depth of field. This is another topic that could be an entire article, or series, or book(s)… So to keep it short, the smaller the “f/x.x” number is, the more light gets through the lens and the shorter the depth-of-field. Like the focal length, apertures can be either fixed (f/2.8) or variable (f/4.5-6.3).
The majority of the current camera product lines will offer the camera as either body only, or come in a kit with a number of lenses. A term you will hear a lot is “kit lens”. In general, these lenses are lower quality than lenses purchased separately. But I want to be clear here, it doesn’t mean they are poor quality. I think a lot of the kit lenses get undeserved trash talking by people trying to show off. Kit lenses do a good job, but there are better quality lenses out there. I mentioned this before. If you’ve got extra money in the budget, you will get more bang for your buck on glass, so spend it here.
Every brand has kit lenses with similar specs. The most common will have focal lengths between 16mm on the wide end and 55mm on the telephoto end. Nikon has a number of different versions of the 18-55mm kit lens. This offers a great range of focal lengths that are commonly used, while keeping the size small. The aperture’s generally range from about f/3.5 to 6.3. They do very well in the outdoors, but show their weakness indoors. They are very usable in most settings.
If you go Nikon, the wide angle kit lens that you want is the AF-P DX NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR. The important letters to watch for are the “AF-P” and the “VR”. AF-P is the most recent lens series from Nikon. VR means it has optical vibration reduction. This lens is included with most of the D3500, D5600 and D7500 kits. The other very common lens is the 70-300mm telephoto lens. Again, there are a number of different versions out there. The one I recommend is the AF-P DX NIKKOR 70-300mm f/4.5-6.3G ED VR. Be careful on this one specifically. The non-VR version is much more common than the VR version and the VR is extremely helpful when shooting past 200mm.
If you’re starting from scratch, with these two lenses in your kit you will be in a great place to take some awesome photos. These are the two lenses I used for over 2 years before I expanded. The 70-300 is the long lens that I still use. Canon and Sony both include similar lenses with their kits.
Summary
Let’s summarize what we’ve talked about so far. Brands: There’s really no clear winner here. Nikon and Canon both have FF and APS-C models as well as mirrorless and DSLR. Sony has been all mirrorless for years and offers both FF and APS-C models. With brand choice, I think it’s primarily personal preference. Do you like how it feels in your hand? Do you like the menus? Is it in your budget? I think mirrorless vs. DSLR is also mostly personal preference, with the exception of video. Because of how a mirrorless focuses vs. a DSLR, mirrrorless has a clear advantage. If video will be a regular use of the camera that could be a deciding factor for you.
Full-frame vs APS-C. Each type has its strengths and weaknesses. I think the primary driver here is cost, not image quality. The cost of the bodies varies greatly. FF is generally more expensive, but used FF bodies can be similarly priced to APS-C. On the other hand, APS-C lenses are generally going to be half or less the cost of an equivalent FF lens new or used. Some other reasons to lean towards APS-C. If you shoot lots of telephoto shots (long lens), the APS-C crop factor is free zoom. APS-C is also going to be smaller and lighter. I think APS-C does better with action shots like sports and street photography. I’d lean towards full-frame if you do a lot of low-light shooting, or if you have background with 35mm film. I’d also consider jumping to full-frame if I was doing paid work, with the possible exception of wildlife where the crop factor is so helpful. I shoot 90% or more of my shots with an APS-C camera. I am not one that will argue full-frame’s superiority for all things. Full frame will take great pictures, but it isn’t the best choice for every photographer.
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