Buying your first camera can be a very confusing process. If you're not an experienced photographer you're not going to know exactly what you're looking for. In this article I'm going to try and explain in simple terms what you need to know in order to get the perfect camera for you.
"Ain't nobody got time fo that!" - If so then skip to the summary at the bottom!!
Type of camera
Cameras come in many shapes and sizes and all have their advantages and disadvantages. There are many ways to split them up and explain them (e.g. SLR, Rangefinder and Mirror-less) but this is the way I find easiest.Compacts
Compacts, as their name suggests, are compact. This is their main advantage. You can fit some of these in your pocket, or your handbag without having to worry about taking up space. The problem with compacts are they tend to lack in quality, this is mainly due to the fact that due to a lack of real estate inside the camera, the sensor size is small. Generally speaking; small sensor = small pixels and small pixels = bad pixels. Compacts do have a role though, they are unassuming and as the old saying goes "The best camera is the one you have on you".Professional Compacts / Mirror-less Cameras
Professional compacts and mirror-less camera's are like compacts but have many features that professionals and experienced enthusiasts look for in a camera. Features could include the ability to shoot in RAW format, ways to change exposure without going through menu's and higher end sensors/lenses. They tend to have a price tag to match. Examples would be Fujifilm's X100s or Canon's G15. Some also have interchangeable lenses such as the Olympus PEN.
DSLR
This is the most common type of 'professional' or 'high end' camera that you see. DSLR stands for Digital Single Lens Reflux, which is really just a fancy way of saying that the light goes in through the lens, hits a mirror inside the camera and bounces up into the view finder after hitting a couple more mirrors. This is the type of camera that you're probably thinking about when you want to get your first 'serious' camera. They have lots of room to fit things like a larger sensor which play an integral role in producing better quality images. They also act as part of a 'camera system' which basically means they are compatible with a wide range of lenses which are suited to different purposes and it's compatible with flashes etc.
Lenses
Lenses can seem quite complicated when you don't know what you're looking at, but they're really not as complicated as they seem.
There are two main considerations when choosing a lens to go with your new camera.
The first one is the Aperture. This is basically, how large the hole in the lens is that lets in the light. The aperture is shown as F followed by a number such as F1.8. What you want is a lens with a very large aperture, this will allow the most light to get through the lens and into the camera (a very good thing). The confusing part is the large aperture is actually indicated by a small number. Well... it isn't really because the aperture number is actually a fraction, but for simplicity's sake you want a lens with a "small f number" the smaller the better really.
The second thing is the focal length. This is basically whether the lens is a wide angle or a telephoto that can photograph an eagle from a mile away. The lenses focal length is indicated in mm's. A lens with a wide angle with have a small focal length (20mm would be a very wide angle lens). A telephoto lens would be indicated by a large number such as 200mm. Generally speaking landscapes use wide angle, portraits use between 50-100mm. If you're taking photos of birds or things that are a long way away then you probably want between 100mm-1,000mm.
Also, keep in mind that a lens that works on one camera may not work on another, and the lens is specific for the type of sensor you get. So make sure your lens is compatible with your camera.
Sensor Type / Size
Before I talk about the type of sensor that we're talking about and the size you need some of you may be asking the question "What is a Sensor?". A sensor is basically the digital version of the film that you put in the film camera. It is what records the image. The sensor is made up of millions of light sensitive diodes which are able to measure light levels. Each diode equates to one pixel.
Sensors come in a variety of types and sizes. The main types are CCD and CMOS. Previously it mattered which one you had but they are becoming become more and more similar and thus you don't really need to worry about it.
What you do need to worry about though is the size of the sensor as this is extremely important. When it comes to sensor sizes it's pretty simple, there is one rule, and that is "the bigger the better". The reason that bigger is better is because when you have a bigger sensor, each 'pixel' or light catching diode has a larger surface area to collect light from. Cameras usually have either a "Micro 4/3", "Cropped Sensor" or "Full Frame".
The smallest is the Micro 4/3 sensors are usually found in compact cameras such as the olympus pen.
Cropped sensors are sort of an in-between sized sensors, they are found mainly on entry level DSLR cameras. Most brands that sell DSLR's have two types of camera ranges, the cropped sensor one and the full frame. For example, the cropped sensor line for Nikon is the DX range and the full frame range is the FX range.
It's important to note that when talking about camera lenses, each lens is only designed to work with one size of sensor. While cropped sensor lenses will often fit onto full frame cameras they don't work as well as one made for a full frame camera. The opposite is also kind of true, but instead of the quality being worse if you put a full frame lens on a cropped sensor, the quality would be about the same, but the zoom is more than it would be on its native full format camera.
Megapixels
A megapixel refers to a million pixels. When a camera talks about the amount of megapixels it is talking about how many pixels the end image will be and usually how many light sensitive diodes the sensor has.More megapixels does not equal better quality photos!
If you want to understand why, you need to understand what a megapixel is. (if you couldn't care less then skip this paragraph) Pixels are small blocks of color which make up an image. They are produced by a light sensitive diode on the surface of your camera's sensory chip (the digital equivalent of the film you use to (or still do) put in your camera). Essentially each diode creates one block of color (a pixel). When you have one million of these diodes working together next to each other you produce one million pixels, or a Megapixel. So more megapixels = better quality photos? Well.. not exactly and here's where it gets a bit complicated. When you cram twice as many diodes into a sensor each one of those diodes become smaller and smaller. The biggest problem with smaller diodes is that the area which each diode can collect light from becomes smaller, which means that it's harder for the pixel to record the light. Without getting too technical as to why, this will all result in more digital noise. Assuming you have taken and views photos at some stage of your life you would have seen digital noise, it's often referred to as 'grain' as it looks (and acts) a bit like film grain except it's much uglier. Noise is most apparent in night photos or photos where there isn't much light where the photo is being taken.In summary, the more megapixels you have, the harder it will be for your camera to "see" in low light, and the more digital noise (or "grain") your camera will produce. So unless you plan on only using your camera in bright daylight and never inside or at dusk/night, then this should be a very important consideration next time you are looking at buying the newest 40 odd megapixel camera phone. However, when paired with a good lens and good light, megapixel count does often equal more detail in your photos, so it's important to try and find a balance between good low light performance, and lots of megapixels and detail. Don't just go for the highest megapixel count. A good example of this is the current generation camera phones. The HTC One has only 4 megapixels but is brilliant in low light, and each one of those pixels is really sharp and well produced. The new Nokia Lumia 1020 has 41 megapixels, in bright daylight you can take a photo of a landscape and zoom in to individual blades of grass, great! Except then the sun goes behind a cloud, or you go inside, or the sun goes down and all of a sudden the picture is so full of digital noise/grain that you can barely even make out if you're looking at a nice grassy field, or a sandy flatland. The iPhone has nailed the megapixel count in my opinion with around 8-13 depending on the generation you're looking at. Although I wouldn't advice buying the iPhone 5 over the 4s if you care about the camera (I''ll get to that in a later article).
So, how many megapixels do I really need?
Well, that's a very important question to be asking yourself and the answer will probably surprise you. Let's first look at what you're going to do with the pictures you take. If they're going to be going onto your computer, your computer screen probably has a resolution of 1080x1920 pixels if it's a high definition screen and lots of you will have even less. 1080x1920 means that your screen has exactly 2,073,600 pixels which is also known as 2 megapixels. Thats right, only 2MP! So what is happening to the other 38 megapixels that my ridiculous camera phone produced when I took the photo? Basically.. they aren't being displayed on your screen. Where are they? Invisible land, I don't know as I'm not a computer programmer but the point is you definitely aren't looking at them.
So if you're going to be putting your photos on the computer for you and everyone to see and wont be printing them out then you DO NOT need a camera with more than 2 megapixels to get the most out of your computer screen. Now.. if for some reason you're reading this 10 years in the future when everybody has 4k "Ultra HD" computer screens, then you will need a camera with a (not so) whopping 8 megapixels to get the most out of your Ultra HD future computer screen.
"But I want to print out my photos, so how many megapixel do I need?"
Well... that question is a bit more complicated. An 8mp camera can product very high quality 8x10 inch prints which his probably about as large as you're going to want to print.
If for some reason you want to go bigger (and this is where it gets complicated) then just know that an inkjet printer usually prints at 300 pixels per square inch, anything more than that and you're just wasting your money (and low light potential) on megapixels you wont be using.
That being said you can also turn a 8 megapixel photo into a 100 megapixel photo for printing through the process of interpolation. Interpolation is when a software program (like photoshop) looks at all the pixels in the image, and creates more by "guessing" what the pixels should be based on the pixels around where the extra pixels are going in. This is good to make sure that your photo doesn't look pixelated when you print it out, but it doesn't really add any more detail to the photo so the photo will look softer than an image which had enough megapixels to not have to interpolate the data. However, this doesn't mean it will look bad and I've seen award winning photos taken on 8MP cameras that have been blown up to meters across and while they look a bit soft, its works for that style of image. So in conclusion there isn't really any right answer for you other than "as many as you want" ...Sorry!
So the less megapixels I can get away with, the better right?
Well unfortunately it's not that simple either... While you can be fairly certain that it if has more megapixels than the competitive camera then it will be worse in low light, sometimes, rarely, there are exceptions to the rule. This is mainly because camera's that have a better build quality (or a larger sensor size) can have more megapixels AND less noise than a camera that isn't as well made or that has a smaller sensor size. This mean's that it's important if you want to get it right you need to take a look at 100% crop test shots of each camera you're looking at buying. However luckily for you those tech obsessed people on the internet have usually already done all the ground work for you. www.dpreview.com/ is a very reputable camera review website where you can usually get 100% crops from most cameras as well as all the smallest of details on the technical side. When looking at the 100% crops, the part that will tell you whether or not the camera performs well in low light is when the test shots are taken at increasingly higher ISO's. The higher the ISO (a.k.a. the chip sensitivity setting) the higher the amount of digital noise there will be in the image.
Summary
Type of Cameras
Decide whether or not you want to be able to change the lens in your camera.
Work out what size you can deal with.
Lens
Preferably get a lens with a small "f number" like F1.8. Don't stress too much about this but if you want to know which one of two lenses to that are similar in all other ways, get the one with the "small f number". It will help most in low light.
The focal length determines how wide angle or 'zoomed in' the lens will be. It's measured in mm. A small length like 20mm signifies a wide angle lens. A long length like 200mm signifies a 'zoomed in' lens.
Also, keep in mind that a lens that works on one camera may not work on another, and the lens is specific for the type of sensor you get. So make sure your lens is compatible with your camera.
Sensor
The bigger the better. Simple.
Megapixel
More megapixels is not always better. More megapixels means smaller pixels which means poor low light performance. Assess what you're using your camera for. If you're going to put your photos on the computer only then you only need 2 megapixels for an HD screen, anything more than that and it won't make a difference how many you have because they wont be displayed.
I hope I've cleared up some confusion when looking at the specs and stats. If you liked this article or you found it a little useful then please let me know, I would love to hear it. I hope to put up more posts in the future on topics such as "Getting off Auto mode" as well as other camera tips and tricks as well as hopefully some camera reviews
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