“Which camera should I buy?” is often a question many photographers get asked. The answer is not an easy one and is dependent on many factors. The first thing to consider is how much of a photographer the questioner already is and how far does s/he want to go with photography?
There are two main aspects to photography.
The technical – this is learning the technical aspects of exposure and triune relationship between shutter, aperture and ISO. All three elements affect the image exposure.
The creative – the aesthetic of the photograph and how it is composed. Exposure is also part of the creative aspect of the photo, but for the purposes of this short intro we’ll treat them as separate.
Most beginners don’t need to worry too much about the technical aspects of exposure and my suggestion is to learn composition and compositional techniques. The ideal camera to practice compositional techniques on is……your smartphone! That’s right, you don’t need to have a fancy schmancy DSLR to get fairly decent images. Most modern smartphones have very decent cameras and come with very good editing apps. The iPhone 5, the iPhone 6 and the Samsung Galaxy range all have excellent cameras that can give you some excellent results. Although my main camera is an expensive Nikon D7200 Digital SLR Camera, my everyday camera is an iPhone 6, just check out my Instagram feed to see the kind of photos I get with my iPhone!
My iphone photography on instagram
If you are a photography newbie, I would definitely recommend sticking with your smartphone camera and really learning and studying composition and start building up a good repertoire of well composed smartphone photos. Once you feel that you have understood and gained proficiency in composition, you can then think about getting a dedicated camera.
In the next article I shall talk about the kind of editing I do on my smartphone images and share some of my techniques that give my images a little more “pop”.
, my everyday camera is an 