Buying a camera: everything you need to know

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Cameras are everywhere. There’s one in your laptop, two in your phone, and probably a pair in your tablet that you’ve never used. There’s maybe one in your doorbell, even, or strapped to your head while you bomb the slopes. We’re taking more pictures in more ways and sharing them in more places than ever. Yet most of us use our cameras with the bare minimum of knowledge, just pointing and shooting and hoping for an Instagrammable moment. And even if you’re buying a camera because you’re ready to move beyond your iPhone and take pictures you’ll want to save forever, it’s hard to know what to do.

Camera companies don’t exactly make life easy, either. Spec sheets are laden with alien terms like ISO and f-numbers, and once you manage to get a grasp on what they mean, you’re still confronted with a spectacular variety of options. So we’ve put together this guide to help you navigate the quagmire of excess information, acronyms, and jargon. It’ll enlighten you about which specs are important when, and what cameras are suitable for whom. Sound good? Then read on!

A GUIDE TO THIS GUIDE

As with our smartphone buyer’s guide, you should be careful not to treat this as a definitive dictum on what to buy. What we’re seeking to do here is help you make an informed decision by separating the meaningful data from the meaningless. This is a guide to discerning the things that will make a recognizable difference in your photographic experience and results. We’ve selected a few of our favorite cameras in the categories below, but those will change over time, whereas the rest of this advice will (hopefully) remain relevant for a long time to come.

Basics of photography

Every camera, from the tiny webcam embedded in your laptop to the full-frame pro cameras built by Nikon and Canon, operates under the same set of basic principles. They come from the very name of photography, the roots of which are the Greek photos, meaning light, and graph, meaning to draw or record — ergo, a photograph is essentially a map of light. When you take a picture of your favorite cityscape, you’re not actually documenting the streets, or the skyscrapers, or the milling crowds — you’re drawing up a recording of the light reflecting off of them.

The most common technique for making this recording is by channelling light through a lens onto a photosensitive material that soaks it up and turns it into an image. That light-absorbing canvas was once film, which has since been replaced by electronic sensors in modern digital shooters. In either case, initiating the light capture is done by opening a shutter in front of the photosensitive surface. By adjusting how long that shutter stays open (shutter speed), the sensitivity of the digital sensor (ISO), and how much light passes through the lens (aperture), you can control exactly how your image appears.

Since light is the only information your camera collects, it should come as no surprise that well-lit scenes typically come out looking sharper and nicer than dark and moody shots illuminated only by a streetlight — more light just gives you more information to work with. When shooting in the dark, the camera must work either harder (with higher ISO) or longer (with a slower shutter speed) to properly recreate the image in front of it. That’s where the flash comes in, a strobe of white light synchronized with the opening of the shutter. It comes with tradeoffs of its own, though: the strength of the flash can wash out fine detail in nearby subjects or lead to the infamous red-eye effect. Tripods are also invaluable in counteracting the blur caused by shaky hands. Unfortunately, they can do nothing about motion within your composition, and they aren’t exactly portable.

Ultimately, the number one lesson in photography is that there are alwaystradeoffs. If you want the best possible image quality, you’ll need specialized, expensive, bulky equipment. Should portability be your highest priority, you’ll have to accept that some photos and creative ideas will be beyond your reach. There are a number of other considerations to take into account when composing an image — and, consequently, choosing the best camera for the job — which we’ve detailed below. Once you’ve wrapped your head around what they will mean for your intended photography adventure, you should have a good idea of the kind of camera that will best suit your needs.