Which camera is the best?

Be sure to purchase our book for a complete explanation of photography!

The most frequent asked question amongst beginner photographers.

Unfortunately there is a tendency amongst people to think that if you buy the latest and greatest automatic camera, you will start to take wonderful pictures. There is nothing that can be further from the truth than this.

The most important fact to learn about photography is the variables and how they interact. If you know this you can get the same results with either a 20 year old fully manual SLR or a brand new state of the art Nikon. 

Today's modern cameras only make it easier for the photographer to make exposure decisions, but unfortunately the automatic functions is not always right. 

A good lens and thorough knowledge about photography will contribute more to better photographs than a expensive camera. So, if your budget do not allow for a brand new camera, you will benefit more from starting of with an old manual SLR camera. The Pentax K1000 always was and still is one of the most robust manual cameras. You can get a second hand one now for more or less R900.00 to R1100.00, and this should include at least a standard 50mm fixed lens. The beauty of Pentax is, if you should decide later on to upgrade to a new automatic camera like a MZ5, you will still be able to use the old manual lens of your K1000 with the new camera. With whatever old camera you start of, keep this lens thing in mind. Upgrading to a new camera is not so bad, but collecting the lenses might be quite expensive. Another sad factor is that many of the brand name camera lenses is not as good a quality as lenses manufactured by lens manufacturers. If you start to buy extra lenses for you camera, rather stick to the guys who do not manufacture cameras. A rather good quality lens which also fits in most of our budgets is something like "Sigma" if you have more money you can't go wrong with "Tamron". 

If you go out and buy any camera, make sure that, if it is an automatic camera, that it have a manual over ride function, thus enabling you to use it in the fully manual state. Also see that it have a "bulb" function. The bulb function enables you to keep the shutter open for the time you choose, even hours should it be. This is a must for night photography. Another plus, which very few modern cameras have, is a depth of field preview function. The picture you see through you view finder is normally the picture at the minimum depth of field. Even if you select a greater depth of field you will still see the minimum in your view finder. The depth of field function will allow you to preview the depth of field you selected.

In my opinion the most modern camera's light meters are all accurate enough for general photography. So the make of camera you buy will only be dependant from your personal taste and budget. All the camera do is to keep lens in position and to ensure that the shutter opens and closes at the correct speed. So it is rather insignificant. Stick with the known names like Pentax, Canon or Nikon and it will not really make a difference which one you buy. The only difference between these cameras is the fancy functions build into them, which make it easier for the "point-and-shoot" family of photographers to use. The real photographer will hardly ever use these functions.

Remember that a good lens is worth much more than an expensive camera. It is not the camera that make the photographer. Most of the state of the art pictures you see every day was taken by a normal old fashioned manual SLR or medium format camera. So don't spend thousands on the latest and greatest, rather spend it on you knowledge and your lenses.

Back to main page