How to buy a Digital SLR (DLSR) camera
The leap to a digital single lens reflex (DSLR)camera is a large one, especially in terms of cost. If you have decided that you are ready to make that leap, here are some tips to help you make sure to do it right.
You know that getting into DSLR cameras is not cheap. Plus, after you make the plunge, it is sort of like fishing; there is always something that you need to (or want to) buy. It is therefore wise to get off on the right foot, and to consider absolutely all the factors you can before you start to write checks. This column will bring up some thing that you may have thought of, or perhaps haven’t, but which should be a large part of your decision regardless.
Price
DSLR cameras can get very expensive. It would be wise to think about how much you can really spend before getting too deeply into the research. Just getting your feet wet is going to cost you at least a thousand dollars, and can easily run to almost ten times that amount. You need to decide which section of the prices scale you need to stay in. So realistically set some sort of a limit beyond which you will not go and try to stick to it.
As an aside, there used to be two kinds of digital SLR cameras: Nikons and all the others. That is no longer quite so true. Once other manufacturers, and especially Canon, discovered how much some people were willing to spend, they decided to move into the high-price territory which was previously the domain of Nikon alone. That said, I have a friend who is a professional photographer, specifically for the Associated Press, who maintains that nothing but a Nikon will do. You will need to decide if that is a snob factor or a quality factor.
Prices do not only apply to the camera body. It is also critical that you consider the price of accessories, especially lenses, but also memory cards, filters, extra batteries, and warranties. Costs for these items can add up over time, and you will be surprised how tempted you will be to buy more lenses, and even new camera bodies, for different situations. My AP friend rarely has less than $100,000 worth of photo gear near him at any one time, including some lenses that are worth more than my car.
Camera Usage
There are almost as many kinds of photographers as there are people. Luckily, they fall into categories that we can assign ourselves to. Are you a taker of snapshots, a nature photographer, a sports photographer, or some other kind? Do you want to do low-light work, perhaps extreme close-ups, or a lot of inside shots of homes? All of these things require at least slightly different features. And you will need to make sure that the camera that you select has the features that you need. Plus, different cameras do different things better; all features are not created equal. You need to be prepared to dig into the details.
Resolution
Give considerable thought to how much resolution you will need in your new camera. There are some technical reasons that mean that more megapixels are not always better, so you will also need to keep track of such factors as the sensors used to actually capture the images. More megapixels should have larger sensor to support them; more megapixels with a small sensor means lower quality.
You should also understand that, for those very same reason plus others, more megapixels cost more money. If you are not going to print truly large prints, or if you are not going to take professional photos for purposes that need a lot of megapixels, perhaps you can save a bit of money by going with a 14-megapixel camera rather than a 21-megapixel camera.
Camera size
Remember that DSLRs tend to take up more room than other types of cameras. Not only are the camera bodies larger in order to do the SLR thing, but you will need to carry around more accessories. The purchase of zoom lenses mitigates this situation a bit, but you will still probably wind up with a wide-angle zoom, a medium zoom, and a long-range zoom. In addition, since zoom lenses generally require more light than lenses of a single focal length, any forays into low-light photography may well require that you also have a number of non-zoom lenses in your camera bag(s). You are not only going to have to buy all this stuff. You are going to have to carry it.
Future costs
Not only will you be making fairly major purchases in lenses, but there are other future costs to consider. Whatever brand camera you buy today may put constraints on what you purchase in the future. Canon lenses do not interchange with Nikon lenses, and that truth ripples down the chain of most digital SLRs. So will the Canon line carry you through anticipated future upgrades? If it will not, you may be better off to select a Nikon now so that when you upgrade you do not have to replace all of your lenses (or, of course, vice versa).
In addition, if you are sure that you are going to want more in the future, might it not be worthwhile to buy a little more DSLR now in order to avoid having to upgrade again in a fairly short time as you use up the abilities of your first DSLR? A few more dollars spent now on improved resolution that you’re sure you are going to want in six months or a year might mean the difference between using this first DSLR camera for six months or for two years.
And, of course, there are an almost unlimited number of features that differ among cameras, all the way from anti-shake to ISO settings to smile recognition and automatic bracketing. Worse, there are more brands of camera to consider than the popular Canon and Nikon lines. So you need to be ready to spend a lot of time thinking about what you need, what you want, and exactly what camera will give it to you in your price range. This time and effort, spent up front, will pay very real dividends once you are ready to start pressing that shutter button.
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