New Gear - What Is It?

It seems that I’m always giving advice to people who are buying cameras. In many cases, it’s someone who’s making the transition from point and shoot digicam to DSLR. I’m quite happy to help people when they are getting prepared to buy their new camera. When I think about it though, my advice is always a variation of a single theme and could be boiled down to a couple of sentences. The conversation could then go something like this.

“What camera should I buy?”

“Decide on a budget. Go to the camera store. Look at all the camera kits in your price range, handle them, play with the controls, cycle through the menus. Then buy whichever one feels easiest for you to use”.

And for most people, that all they need. The truth is, at a similar price point, there’s no real difference between any of the offerings no matter whether it’s Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax or anyone else.

For people who already have a DSLR and a collection of accessories, it’s even easier because you’re more-or-less limited to the same manufacturer as what you’ve already got. You could change to another brand, that’s certainly possible, but unless you only have a single camera and one lens, changing makers gets expensive quickly. Not only do you need to change camera bodies but also lenses, flashes and other accessories. Lenses and flashes in particular usually get upgraded to a much longer frequency than a camera body.

Buying a first DSLR is often an expensive commitment and I’ll continue to happily advise people, but I really can’t see the advice changing a whole lot.

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