Welcome back. In this short article series we’ve looked at some of the things to think about when choosing a camera. This can be for any type of camera you may want to get your hands onto, be it a mobile phone camera, pocket camera or something larger.
The basic ideas apply to everything, we start getting some more interesting decisions points when we look at interchangeable lens cameras such as the bridge/mirrorless, DSLR or even medium format cameras. It gets interesting because the bodies are no longer the single key consideration as the glass takes on greater importance with the quality of the lenses. Good glass is expensive, and you can see it, bodies regularly update with often minor changes and still capture good images, the glass however, allow more flexibility, but that’s all for later articles.
Anyway, so far in this series we’ve looked at some questions to ask ourselves, which are:
· the planned use of camera
· the subject matter
· when you may want to take a picture
· are megapixels that important
· the type of zoom (optical, digital or both)
· and finally, the type of camera you’re looking at (mobile, pocket, mirrorless etc.)
With all of these various questions in mind you would by now have some idea of what you need to look for or ask yourself when trying to decide on camera for you?
If you already have a camera though, you have something you can use now. See if it is for you or if you need to change to an alternative. There’s an old saying, the camera that’s in your pocket now is the best camera, as it’s the one that you have with you right now.
You can go out and buy the most expensive DSLR on the market, with all the best lenses, all of the gear that you could ever possibly want. But are you always going to be lugging it around, is it what you have with you when you see a subject that you have to take a picture of? When you see something and the desire or need to take a picture hits you, you may not even have all your great care with you. The only thing you might have is the phone your pocket and its inbuilt camera. If you’re going to school, to work, driving somewhere you’re not always going to have all your camera gear with you. Most photographers plan to go out and capture images, plan a photo shoot and plan the gear they might need. Often spontaneity is the key to capturing that ad hoc image and the only way to do that is to use the tool that you have with you at that time. So ultimately the best camera right at that moment is only camera you have with you.
Of course this doesn’t stop you from having all of your own great camera gear, indeed this may be what you’re aspiring to. But most photographers don’t always have a high end camera on them all the time, often they will have a small pocket camera or use a mobile phone camera because that’s what they have with them is a walk around. The walk around camera is the one that’s with you virtually all the time, while not necessarily the best camera you may own, it will be the best one you have with you.
So in this series, we’ve given lots of things to think about when you go shopping for your ideal camera. If you’re looking to go out and purchase a larger camera bear in mind what we’ve been talking about over these few articles. These ideas will assist you in making a decision if you are indeed looking to purchase something new. Hopefully you got something out of these articles, if so why not share some of these with your friends.
In future articles we will look at how to use a mobile phone as camera, the photographic triangle, composing a photo, how things work when taking a photo and lots of other bits and pieces which may be of interest and help you on your photographic path. So keep an eye out and will see each other in the future. Bye for now.