advice on photo equipment
Here is my advice for anyone considering a camera purchase.
By all means, ask around. Ask photographers for their opinion, ask camera store staff. But back this up by doing your own research. There are several websites out there that that have reviews of various products. The best way of finding reviews, however, is simply Google. To research a class of camera, for instance, you can enter "review DSLR entry level" and it'll spit back useful results. To be more specific, you can query a term like "review Pentax K20D" to find all you could read in a week on that model.
When shopping for a camera, keep three things in mind:
- what you're buying the camera for
- your budget
- how much camera equipment do you want to carry?
1. buy for a purpose
Cameras are, quite simply, tools. The trick is to buy the best-quality tools without overbuying.
If you're looking for something to take photos when you and your friends are out for the evening, by all means get a digital point &shoot—it's light, it shows you immediate results, and it's easy to use just about anywhere. Don't talk yourself into anything more (see point three).
2. your budget
No hobby is worth going into debt over. When shopping for cameras, it's easy to be lured upward to something with more features. Sticking to your budget ensures that you'll not weigh yourself down with worrisome and hazardous debt for the sake of a hobby.
That said, it's important to use your budget to the full. When it comes to camera equipment, you usually do get what you pay for. Yes, some brands of equipment carry a premium price disproportionate to the value—Canon and Nikon, the market leaders, command higher prices than Olympus and Pentax, for instance, and Sony as usual insists on charging as if there name carries a premium. But the general rule is that cost generally comes with features.
Spend what you've decided you can, but bear in mind certain expenses that might not occur to a new camera buyer, such as:
- camera bag
- tripod
- filters
- memory cards
- additional lenses (if buying an SLR)
tip: A camera bag is just for holding your camera gear. Be careful not to overspend—most bags are overpriced, and some of them are ridiculously overpriced.
tip: Zoom lenses are great; they're versatile, they let you cut down on the number of lenses you must carry, and they generally result in optical quality. But with Zoom lenses you obsolutely get what you pay for. Spending $300 more on a zoom will make a huge difference in the quality of the photos. Given the difference, for instance, between the following two lenses, choose the latter even if it is twice the price (and weight):
- 12-55 f/2.8-5.6
- 12-55 f/2.8
The difference is in the design objectives for the lens. Having a constant maximum aperture (the f/ number) means that the designers were aiming for an obviously superior lens. These lenses typically will also feature designation such as "APO" for apochromatic or "aspherical" to denote something of the design of the lens.
3. size and weight
Cameras, especially fully-featured SLR's, can be large, awkward and heavy. On several occasions, I've seen or read accounts of people who gave up on a camera simply because it's too large to lug around. When shopping for a camera, bear this in mind: the size/bulk/weight of a camera is a kind of cost to camera ownership. Whatever you do, don't talk yourself into camera gear that is so large you won't take it with you.
in summary
My advice it to keep it as simple as possible. Do your research and make sure you've come out of the camera store with something that will suit your needs and won't leave you too burdened or broke to use it.
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