Introduction

I get this question a lot:  “What camera should I get?”  The obvious answer is of course “It depends.”  This article is meant to give a brief understanding of what it depends on so that you can make an informed purchase.  By breaking this into 2 categories, you can see the section that fits you best.  Read both – it may save you a lot of money.

Casual User:  You like to capture photos for memories, facebook posts, and perhaps printing them at your local Walgreens.  This can be done for $150-$300 and a few 10′s of dollars a year for prints

Quality Photo User:  You are enthusiastic about photos and are mostly shooting in modes other than “Automatic”.  You want to capture memories but are highly selective about the ones you keep and you do some level of editing on most of your photos.  Your budget is $500-$1500 and will do quality prints that cost $20-$100 each.

High End, leaning toward professional user:  You want to squeak out the best quality images your budget can afford and are dedicated to this as a hobby and eternal time-suckubus.  If you’re at this point, I have nothing more to offer that wouldn’t be better described by the professionals and books out there.

Notice how I don’t even mention cameras yet.  That’s because most people assume a digital SLR results in quality photos.  Wrong.  You start with your needs first, then move into the design of your photography setup – a much larger picture than just the camera choice.

Casual User

Ok, so you want some good quality photos and you want it to be easy.  You’re in luck because after about 2005 all companies were producing cheap, high quality cameras.  You need a simple Point and Shoot (P&S) camera, a small memory card, a free or cheap photo editing software program and any old laptop or desktop computer.  Keep in the mind that with good outdoor light the P&S camera can take just as good of pictures as a digital SLR!

Camera

Don’t bother worrying about the brand.  In this market basically all cameras will deliver good quality photos.
Don’t even think about the number of pixels.  Don’t pay a penny more for more pixels.  In fact, get less.  The fewer the better.  The reason is two-fold:  Anything above 5 Mega-pixels (MP) will allow you to print at the 8×10 level so more pixels doesn’t help the quality or resolution of the photo.  More pixels actually degrades the photo in low light conditions, making it look more grainy!

With that in mind, go check out dpreview.com They have an excellent catalog of camera reviews and comparisons.  Check out the buying guide to search by feature or price or…
There’s lots of cameras out there.  Just pick one – you’ll be happy.  If you want a particular feature, like waterproof… plan on spending around $300.

Once you get it, change the settings to use less pixels.  Say 6 MP if you plan on making 8×10 prints or around 4 MP if you plan on using it just for web photos and 5×7 prints.  This will save you a lot of memory space on your computer.

Every once in a while you should burn a DVD with your photos for backup, unless you’re already backing up to an external hard drive.

Software

Your camera probably comes with software to manage your photos.  The problem is that you will not always have that camera and often they make it harder to pull photos from a different manufacturer.  Additionally they do not support or upgrade the program much.

Picasa is free and pretty good.  Use this to manage your photos and do some editing.  There are others that are free but I enjoyed this one.  It’s supported by Google so it won’t be going away anytime soon…

If you want to do more complicated, Photoshop-like editing you can download GIMP for free.

Peripheral

When you buy the camera go ahead and get the case, cheap flexible tripod and memory card.   B&H photo usually throws this in for pretty cheap.

Summary

Simple eh?  go to dpreview – check out the latest.  Don’t worry about brand or pixels, download free software and you’re off and running!  There’s lots of cameras out there.  Just pick one – you’ll be happy.

Quality Photo User

Photography is a hobby and you’re dedicated to making better pictures that you can be proud of.  Everything written here will help with the mechanics of photography – taking a good picture will be up to you!  It would be a good idea to read this article on Photography Mechanics before, during or after reading this article.  Plan on spending $800 to $2000 here, and don’t fool yourself into thinking that if you budget for $1000, you can get a camera for $900.  You must also dedicate the time to understand the manual function of a camera.  If you plan on not reading the manual, and always shoot in auto mode, go back and read the previous section and save yourself a lot of money.  DO NOT buy a dSLR and shoot in auto and jpg!!!!  I will fly to your house and kidney punch you.  Furthermore, read this whole section and take it seriously – if you think you can skimp on some of the areas so you can get a more expensive camera you’re not paying attention.

Camera

You may have already decided you want a dSLR (Single Lens Reflex – the big fuckers).  Throw that idea away.  What you want is quality photos.  You may very well still end up with one but don’t make that choice until you know the facts.  There are a lot of factors to think of:  price, lens capability, shutter speeds, video, functions, ease-of-access of the functions.  I’ll try to narrow it down so the important choices are made 1st.

The apparent dichotomy is, a high-end P&S or a dSLR.  The difference between low end SLR kit($700 with lens) and high end P&S ($500) is actually pretty small.  In terms of lens quality, detector quality, functionality they are very similar so this makes the factors for deciding much easier!  Fact is, the P&S will likely produce better pictures overall than the cheaper dSLRs.

1. Budget is less than $1500.  Buy a high-end P&S*
2. Budget is greater than $1500.  Consider a high-end P&S with more accessories, a 4/3 camera, or a medium level SLR ($1500, which probably puts you closer to the next category, High-end user).  This will require further refinement to decide.

You’re skeptical.  I can tell.  How can I say that if the budget is less than $1500, buy a $500 camera?  Keep reading… trust me.
*The exception is if you have already identified the need for specialty lenses.  The P&S cameras will allow about 24-100 mm focal lengths.  Good for reasonable wide angle landscape shots and zoom for most applications.  If you need to zoom waaaay into things (say close-up shots of waterskiers or birds) you’ll need to get an SLR or 4/3  for the lens options.  Conversely if you want fisheye or very wide angle shots you will also need specialty lenses.  I shoot a lot with a 10-20 so SLR is my choice.

When I say “high-end P&S” what I’m really referring to is the point and shoot cameras that can shoot in RAW.  These are typically owned by people that also have an SLR but want the convenience of size.  There’s only about 3 on the market right now.  Check dpreview or similar sights for the latest.  Shooting in RAW is covered in the Photography Mechanics page.  Shooting in RAW is a must for great photos.

Software

Go buy Adobe Lightroom.  It’s $300 and worth every penny.

This tool facilitated the biggest jump in the quality of my photos and simultaneously decreased the time dedicated to managing photos.  Why?  It supports all types of RAW, has a large suite of editing tools, makes managing, finding and sorting your growing library about 70 kajillion times easier.  A kajillion is bigger than a fuckton.  As the upper right corner shows, you can manage the library, develop photos, prepare prints and post to a website all from a single program.  Don’t buy photoshop, buy Lightroom.

Gimp currently only supports jpg so it’s not much use.  If you need more tools than Lightroom has – plunk down the $600 for Photoshop which integrates well with Lightroom (you can transition back and forth).  I do not own Photoshop.

Accessories

Tripods. Doing landscape or night shots?  Stop fucking around with blurry images, high iso noise images, and shitty Target quality tripods.  Don’t want to search?  Go with Manfrotto 728B.  $125.

Flash.  I’m no expert but off-camera flash facilitates fantastic photos for fledgling photographers and experts alike.  Check out strobist. Plan on $300 minimum.  You will definitely run into scenarios where flash is needed.  There are many instances where it makes the photo much better.  Stop saying “I don’t need that so I can save a little money there”.

Those are the two main ones.  Of course you’ll need batteries, bags, polarizers, hard drive backups etc etc.  It never ends.  Ever.

Tips

Shoot in ‘medium RAW’ at about 10 MP.  This is good enough for 20×30 prints and saves a lot of memory (over full frame RAW).  Nikon tends toward less megapixels in their high end cameras – see why less is better in the Photography Mechanics.  RAW uses a lot more space than jpg but many of the functions in Lightroom are useless without it.  If you shoot in jpg – you’ve lost so much information you basically get economy-level-P&S quality images, except that you’ve spent about 10 times as much doing it.

Don’t use the on-camera flash except as maybe a little fill flash (bright background, dark subject).  It produces terrible looking photos.  Use fast glass or strobes.

My Lightroom workflow is as follows:

1. Import to Lightroom
2. Mark to delete photos (X)
3. Fine tune to delete more photos (have to pay attention to changes of camera settings, getting just the right moment, facial expression etc) and remove all marked (ctrl Backspace)
4. Add Keywords to remaining photos (use the spray can and check boxes for keywords that apply to many photos like ‘climbing’).  I add peoples names, locations, activity, photo type (ie landscape)
5. Flag for ones going on my website (P or click in upper left portion of photo)
6. Filter to show flagged photos and add captions
7. Develop – fine tune the looks (Start with Camera Profile all the way at the bottom)
8. Add 5-star to the very best of the best of photos
9. Export flagged to jpg
10. Add jpg photos to Jalbum, the web photo gallery software I use (Free).  Captions come up automatically.  Upload to the website.

You may find a better way but this seems to work for me.  The keywords are nice because you can filter your entire album by keywords or many other types of information, even what lens you used.

Summary

P&S, Lightroom, backup drives, tripod, flash, batteries, bag, memory cards – $1400

Canon 7D, couple lenses, Lightroom, backup drives, tripod, flash, calibrated monitor, occasional professional prints, accessories – $4000.

It’s not cheap to make good photos and it’s necessary to bring the entire process up to the same quality level.  It doesn’t make any sense to buy an expensive camera unless you’re going to buy all the other stuff to allow you to make quality photos.

Spend $150-$300 for a point-and-shoot and be happy, spend $1000 to $1500 for a high-end point and shoot setup, or go dSLR expect to be in $4k or more.