Author: Harry Guinness / Source: lifesavvy.com
Cameras are expensive. New ones can cost anything from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars so how much should you spend? Let’s dig in.
Figure Out What Your Budget Is
Before looking to buy a camera, you should sit down and work out what your maximum possible budget is.
Once you start looking, it’s very easy to let that number creep up, and soon you’re spending your emergency fund, college savings, or rent money on a shiny new Nikon.There are great cameras available at pretty much every price point so before seriously starting your research, make sure you have a maximum ballpark amount you’re prepared to spend.
For this article, I’m going to use a few example budgets to suggest potential cameras:
- Less than $300
- Less than $1000
- Less than $3000
You can obviously use your own budget numbers, but these ranges are a pretty good starting point.
What Photo Gear Do You Already Have?
A lot of people, when they first get started with photography, overlook an important point: the camera is only one piece of gear. The lenses you have are at least as important as the camera—I’d argue they’re more important. You also need SD cards. Different kinds of photography need other gear, for example, for landscape photography you also need a tripod, and potentially some filters.
If you’re buying your second camera, then you probably already have some lenses and other gear. If this is your first camera, then you’ll also need to factor into your budget the cost of buying everything else. You can’t just buy a camera in isolation.
Most entry level cameras come with a basic kit lens included in the price. These are typically 18-55mm lenses with a fairly average maximum aperture of between f/3.5 and f/5.6, depending on the focal length you’re at. Kit lenses are really versatile and are pretty great for street, travel, and landscape photography. They’re not ideal for portraits, but you can get cheap 50mm f/1.8 lenses that are. If you don’t already have a collection of lenses, then I’d recommend getting a camera with a kit lens.
How Much Camera Do You Need?
Modern digital cameras are seriously good. Even decade old cameras are great, so we’ll definitely be considering second-hand camera options. Different cameras, however, have different specialties.
Entry level DSLRs, like the $400 Nikon D3500, take incredible pictures in almost all circumstances. If the light is good, you’ll be hard pressed to tell the difference between the photos you get from a D3500, and a much more expensive model like the D500.
Where more expensive cameras matter is when conditions start to get trickier. If you want to shoot good photos in really low light, take long bursts of fast-moving athletes, or film 4K video, then you will start to push…
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