What should you look for when buying your first DSLR or Mirrorless camera
By: Isaac Leon
Tags: Buying, Photography, Guides And Tutorials, Tips And Tricks

Image by klickblick from Pixabay

Either you want to do it as a hobby or become a professional, the world of photography is expensive. You might start taking photographs with your cell phone but as you progress, you’ll start spending more and more money on editing softwares, cameras, lenses and much more, which I’ll mention later.

You will realize that photography, even if it is a hobby or professional, is 10% taking photos and 90% behind the scenes. I don’t mean to discourage you from enjoying photography but these are the responsibilities that come with photography. On this post I want to help you achieve a better photographic journey without making the same financial mistakes I made.

Make a budget

Let’s start with the subject that everyone hates to talk about, budget. We love money but man we hate doing math but such is the fate of life that we cannot progress nowadays without money and the same applies to photography. Heck, even your cellphone is an expense that we often overlook and that we have to consider as an expense of our budget.

According to Consumerism Commentary we should spend roughly from 1% — 10% of our budget on hobbies and that is after saving, bills paid, and all necessities purchased. Let us break that into number; let’s say you yearly income after taxes is around $30,000 but on average we spend

30% — $9,000 on mortgage or rent,

20% — $6,000 on food,

20% — $6,000 on utilities,

10% — $3,000 for transportation (personal or public)

10% — $3,000 for emergency saving,

leaving us with 10% or $3,000/yearly for “fun” expenses. Of course, this is all hypothetical numbers and you should use your own yearly expense after taxes. The more accurate you input your yearly income the better you know exactly what you can spend on a monthly basis; so work hard on this part.

Now all those numbers are based on a yearly plan but everything nowadays is monthly, and all you have to do is divide that number by 12 (because there are 12 months, fyi). So that means that out of you $3,000 “fun” expenses, you can only spend a maximum of $250 dollars per month.

Also, let’s say you work hourly and you fluctuate paycheck to paycheck and have a hard time getting an accurate yearly income, all you have to do is the same process as above but for the money you recieve during one month.

Now this is something I didn’t even pay attention to when I started with this hobby and created a lot of debt that forced me to skip other bills to pay the equipment.

DSLR or Mirrorless

Now that you have all your finances in order (or at least you’re working on them) you’ll have to do some internet research and some heavy reading. When I talk about a DSLR or Mirrorless camera, I’m not saying you should go buy one right now, you are going to learn about them, look at the specification and manuals of specific cameras, and see which camera is best for you.

As we all know there are tons of brands of cameras out there, but you have to talk to your inner self and say “what do I want this camera for?” Do you want the camera for landscape and nature photography? Do you want a camera with 4k video recording? Do you want to photograph weddings and portraits?

If you want your camera for landscape, nature, birdwatching and all things outdoor, you’ll need a good camera with a weather seal. Pay attention here, because weather seal is not the same as waterproof seal but it will protect the internal components of a camera from light rain, mist, condensation. Also look at the schematics of the camera layout and see if it has a metal frame, which will help the camera from heavy impact.

Weather seal on a Canon EOS R (usa.canon.com)

Metal structure of Canon EOS R (usa.canon.com)

If you want your camera for recording, you have to look at every specification of the camera. I’m talking about file format, audio input and format, if it meets the resolutions you want. Also do a quick search on photography stores if the camera has a wide variety of attachments for your video recording needs.

These are the video specifications for the Nikon D850

If you want to photograph weddings and portraits you need a camera that not only is fast for wedding action images but high in resolution. That way you’ll have more room when editing fine details on the photographs. Also take your photographs in RAW format because this way you can access all of the information that your camera is capable of and will help you later on the editing process. Finally make sure your camera is compatible with good printers, or of your working with a printing company, the person knows the right format of your photographs with size specifications because if not you will end up looking bad to the clients presenting something out of proportions.

Now what do I mean by a high resolution camera, and you’ll be saying “all professional DSLR cameras take high resolution images” and of course they do, but a lot of times people will want to have they images printed large, specially wedding images, or if you work for a magazine a camera with more than the average 24.5MP camera because on the long run, specially when I come to prints. If this is going to be your first camera, you want to be ahead of the curve in quality and that way your camera will last you a long, long time, such as a Canon 5DS/R with 50MP, or a Sony A7R IV with 61MP or a Nikon Z7 with 47MP.

GMSarena.com (camera — definition)

(Also remember, the standard resolution now is around 24 megapixels, you’re not looking for standard because you’re making a long term investment, so you’re looking for what will it be the standard in 10 years, that’s why is best to look for a higher resolution camera)

Marry a brand

This subject is a hard pill for some but when you choose a camera brand, you are also choosing their line of products for that camera, especially when we talk about lenses.

Lenses are EXPENSIVE! (Remember your budget) When I mean expensive, I mean that some lenses are wwaaaaaayyyyy above the 10% annual income and that when you’ll resort to your savings.

For instance, I have a family portrait photography business and I want to upgrade my favorite portrait lens, a Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 and improve it to a Canon EF 85mm f/1.2. This new lens will cost me $2,000 brand new, that’s a $1,500 difference from the one I currently own. Now, I researched for a cheaper alternative and found a Samyang XP 85mm f/1.2 with Canon attachment for $700, lucky me. But I’m starting to have problems with my images. My photographs are showing distorted images on the edge and they are not as good as my friend who has an actual Canon EF 85mm f/1.2.

Well that problem is happening because the cheaper lens is not adapted to the specific manufacturer’s problem of your camera, even though it is adapted to the camera. A lot of those cheaper cameras don’t even have autofocus because if they did, the camera immediately would reject them.

That is why it is importantes to know that when you buy a camera, you also buy their entire lineup of lenses and accessories because the company is not just selling you the lenses to make a profit, but instead they are selling you a lens that takes care of all the problems with your specific camera. That’s why they are so expensive.

It is extremely sad to have to explain this to other photographers colleagues that the problem is not their technique or the way they took the photographs because I know they know their stuff in photography and that their camera are good, is just that the wrong equipment created those problems making them frustrated until the point of selling everything on eBay or Facebook Marketplace.

In Conclusion

Just remember to always have your budget ready so you don’t go into debt, you choose a camera specific to your photographic needs and that whichever camera you chose, you are also marrying their products to have an easy, worry free, photographic journey.