Buying Your Next Camera Part 1: Lenses and Bodies

Buying Photography Gear Without Wasting Your Money — Part 1: The Lens Comes First

Thinking about upgrading your camera? Before you spend your money on the latest body, stop and think about the lens.

In the first of this two-part series, we look at how to make smarter decisions when buying photography gear — starting with what is arguably the most important part of your kit: the lens.

We explore:

• Why the lens can have a greater impact on your photography than the camera body
• Choosing the right focal length for landscapes, portraits, wildlife, travel and more
• Prime vs zoom lenses
• How aperture affects light, depth of field and background separation
• Why the fastest or most expensive lens isn't necessarily the best choice
• DSLR vs mirrorless cameras
• Full-frame vs crop sensors
• How sensor size affects your choice of lenses, particularly for wildlife and travel
• How to choose a camera body based on the lenses and photography you actually need

The goal isn't to persuade you to buy more expensive equipment. It's to help you understand what you actually need — and avoid spending money on features that won't make a meaningful difference to your photography.

The key message? Build your kit around the photographs you want to take, not the camera you think you should own.

It's time for another podcast...

... And... just before I go...

How would you like to improve your photography today?

If you would, I have a free PDF that takes you through 10 tips that you can apply immediately and, I hope, will create a positive change in your photography.

So, if that sounds like something you would like, please click here and get your download.

Have a great day

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

A question I get asked a lot is what's the best camera? Or what's the best camera that I should buy? And if that's a question you've asked, and you might even be asking it now, and if it is now, I'm gonna suggest you step away from the credit card and just listen to this podcast and the next one, because in these two episodes, I'm gonna just talk about what are the important things to consider when you are looking at buying photographic gear. And of course, sitting alongside that, which I've covered in other podcasts and will no doubt cover again, is if you're not satisfied with your photography, is the problem the camera or is it somewhere else? Now, it could be the camera, and I I'm not dismissing that because that may well be uh the problem that you're having. But if it really is the camera, then you will actually be very clear on what the problems are if you've put enough time into your photography to understand what's going on, and that's the important thing. So I'm gonna start in this first episode with looking at the camera body and camera lenses, but before I even do that, I want you to think about the kind of photography you're doing. So, what do you do day to day? Are you mostly doing family pictures, so um holidays, portraits, it could be some urban, or you might be more into bird photography or wildlife if you've got access to wildlife? Um, it could be events, it could be pretty much anything, landscapes. You might like to get out at the weekend, go and do some photography, looking at landscapes. So when you start looking at each of those styles of photography, the requirements of the camera, and when I say camera, I'm actually talking about the camera and lens combination, they can be quite different. So, do you need really fast autofocus tracking? Do you need very wide-angle shots? Do you need a lens that can support that? Do you need a macro lens? So, of course, these are things I can't answer for you. So, when someone does ask me what the best camera is for them, I've no idea mostly. So, because I don't know what they're photographing. So, I'm gonna dive into things in a little more detail. And the most important place to start, particularly if you're looking at a new camera system, is the lens. So it's not the camera body, and that's the first misconception. And the reason for that is that if you let's say you're doing an audio system, so I'm I'm out of date because it's a while since I seriously put together um in my day, it was Hi-Fi system, which dates me. Uh, but when I was budgeting for it, I'd be looking at things like tape deck, um, amplifier tuner, all that kind of stuff, record deck, that also dates me. But the thing that I would split, I'd split my budget down the middle, and half of it would go on my speakers. And the reason for that, when you think about it, is quite obvious because you can spend lots and lots of money on a tape deck, on a tuner, all that kind of thing. But if you're pumping that sound through low-quality speakers, it's going to sound dreadful. And the same principle applies to photography. You can spend a huge amount of money on a flagship body for one of the major manufacturers, but if you are looking through a low-quality lens because you don't have money to buy a good quality lens, what's the point? Because the lens is the most critical part of the camera system, and that's why I'm going to start with it. So, I guess the first thing to look at is what sort of lens do you want? Well, let's look at some types of photography to start with. If you're looking at landscape photography, you're going to want wide angles. So, what's a wide angle lens? So, if you know this, I apologize for repeating it, but if you don't understand this, just to get very clear. So, on a 35mm base system, so that'd be a full-frame DSLR or a film system using 35mm, we've got what we call a normal lens, and that's 50 millimeters, and that's the focal length. So it's a 50 millimeter lens. And why is it called a normal? It's because the angle of view and the level of magnification that you get through the lens is pretty much equivalent to what you see with the human eye. So, in other words, zero magnification when you're looking through it, and the angle of view is pretty much what we would see as an angle of view. So, what I mean by that is just how much of what you're looking at is is in the frame. And when you go to shorter focal lengths, that becomes a wide angle lens because the angle of view that you're now seeing is wider than you would with the human eye. So the magnification is less. Or conversely, you go the other way, you go to a telephoto lens, say uh 70 millimeter, 100 millimeter, whatever. And the angle of view gets narrower and narrower because the magnification is going up. So it's like looking through some binoculars or a telescope or whatever you're looking through. But you're what you're doing, you're pulling your subject closer to you as far as the optics are concerned, as far as the visual effect is concerned. Um now there are some other factors to that, and I'll cover one of them in a bit, but that's fundamentally what the lens is doing. So for what you're photographing, the first thing to look at is what kind of lens do you want? Do you want normal view? Do you want wide angle? Do you want to zoom in? So obviously, with something like landscape photography, you're generally going to be looking at a wide angle lens, and it might even go ultra wide. So the ultra wides are just where you get these really short focal lengths, but you then and then you can get into fish eyes. You start getting more and more distortion. And of course, wide angle lenses will distort at the edges. So is that a factor for you? And if you don't believe me, look at any real estate photographs that are taken inside the property in a smaller room, and you'll notice at the edges that things like kitchen cupboards are peculiar shapes and things like that. Well, that's all down to lens distortion because they're shot with a wide angle lens, because you can get you know more of the view in into the image, and of course, it helps it look a bit more attractive as well. So that's wide angle. So if you're shooting landscapes or anything where you want a wider field of view, you need to think about a wide angle lens. What about wildlife? Which is in fact, I use wide angle because I like to photograph um the context of the animal. So often it's it's not always appropriate. So when I'm in a forest photographing gorillas, I'm not, you know, that's tougher. You can still do it though. But for a lot of it, say savannah, things like that, it's great to put the animal in its environment because then that gives you a completely different feeling uh to the image. So a cheetah very small in a savannah is is really quite anything. So why white angle is one of them. Telephoto for wildlife is pretty much important because generally you want to zoom in on the animal, but often you can't get closer to the animal on foot, and a lot of times you wouldn't want to anyway. So one of the options you have, if you want to fill the frame more, is to move towards your subject, which obviously you can do if you're doing portrait photography, but that's less useful and perhaps less advisable when you're doing things like wildlife. So you need to increase your reach, which is just how close you can visually get to your subject, and that's what we refer to as reach. And obviously, a long telephoto lens, say a 400 plus focal length, gives you sufficient reach that you can then start shooting some you know pretty nice photographs. So that determines the focal length, and also perhaps things like autofocus if you're shooting things that are moving. So this is where things like sports photography or motor racing, things like that, um, autofocus where on your subject, where it can track your subject because that might be moving toward properly towards you, more likely than away from you. But the lens is now tracking, and that can be really helpful. Um, portraits, you are looking at probably something a bit slightly more than your normal view. So typically the the numbers are around 85 millimeters to 135. And the reason is that you want to come in, perhaps zoom in slightly on your subject, but also with all of these different focal lengths, there is some level of distortion. Now, I've spoken about wide angle, how they'll distort um if you if you're shooting in a room, how you get distortion around the edges. If you try and shoot a portrait with wide angle and you're close to your subject, that is going to magnify things that are close to the lens, so someone's nose, and things further back are going to look smaller. So you get probably a not very flattering portrait, if I'm totally honest with you. So you want to have something that has a fairly short um tele, you want to zoom in a little bit, in other words, magnify a little bit. So that's what 85 to 135 is generally the sort of focal length range that you want for portraits. The other thing to remember is that as your focal length gets longer, you compress perspective. So, what do I mean by that? If you think of some runners uh running on a 400-meter track, so they're they're coming around the sort of curve and you're sure you're at the um one end of the straight uh on this track, they've just come round the corner and one of them is now running towards you, and you've got a long telephoto on them. Let's say, let's say it's 400 for the sake of argument. And as they're filling the frame or most of the frame, you then see somebody else coming round the curve of the track and also getting onto the final straight. And that other person will look very, very close at 400 millimeters focal length to the person running. It will look like they're almost on their shoulder. Whereas if you then watch the same couple of people racing, but you're now looking at it from the side of the track, so sort of 90 degrees to them, so you can see the actual distance between them. You'll see that it's it can be quite a big distance. So, what telephotos do, they make the things in the background look closer to the subject than they actually are. So, kind of like the opposite to what you have on car um door mirrors. So, the point I'm trying to make here is that basically lenses have characteristics, and depending on the focal length you're using, that is going to drive certain characteristics. And the important thing to know about that is does that matter for the kind of photography you're doing, or is it something you actually want to use in the photography you're doing? Because that might give you a certain style. So that's portraits again. Street, you probably something like 50mm is good, you or a moderate sort of wide angle, but you want to be discreet. So, in fact, smartphones are probably the best for street photography, unless you want to make use of the other capabilities of the camera. Um, travel, you want more versatility, you want flexibility, you want to keep the weight down. Ideally, you want to use one lens so that you're minimizing the weight you're carrying them and you're traveling with. So that will also determine the kind of lens you go through. And then macro. So macro is um basically where you can focus very close to the end of the lens glass. So um all lenses have a minimum focal distance. So when you get less than that distance away from your subject, the lens won't be able to focus, but macro lenses get you get let you get really close. So if you're photographing very small things where you want to get close, like insects or models or whatever it might be, um, a macro

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SPEAKER_00 12:52

lens can be very, very useful. So, do you need that for what you're doing? So, that is um a brief overview of how lenses might fit in, and also to some extent, focal lengths.

(Cont.) Buying Your Next Camera Part 1: Lenses and Bodies

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Now, I guess to just take that a bit further, uh, particularly with wildlife, as that's the thing I tend to do. What I would recommend is that if you are doing serious wildlife photography, you what you want you don't want a focal length really any less than 400. So a 100 to 400 is great because it gives you a nice um amount of zoom, uh it gives you uh you can compose your image uh in different ways very easily, and you've still got a reasonable amount of reach. If you're shooting that, uh shorter than that, I should say, and you're in a say 70 to 200, probably too short for serious wildlife. But that does take me on to um another subject, which is should you use a prime lens or should you use a zoom lens? Well, that's a valid question because um, and again, just to be clear, a prime lens, excuse me, just has a single focal length, so it might be a 100 millimeter lens. Why would you bother with that? Well, generally uh this historically, anyway, prime lenses would offer much better performance than zoom lenses, so you'd get less distortion. You you're only you only have one focal length, but generally you'd have um you'd have a faster lens, so the aperture maximum aperture is wider. Um, so that's letting in more light, which means you can use a faster shutter speed in a given situation than you can with a lens that has a doesn't have the same aperture. And the glass quality is generally very good. So again, these are just talking generally, and if the and certainly compared to zoom lenses, that would be a fair comment a few years ago. These days, zoom lenses are pretty good, I think, across the board. Not only the the main major camera manufacturers, but also a lot of the independents now. Their lenses are very good, much better than they used to be. So you'll have less distortion at the edges as you change aperture. Um, the there's less obvious change. Some of them would be pretty awful when you push the aperture to one end or the other. So you'd be almost living at F8 just to you know not get um lens um distortion and things happening. These days, though, they're pretty good. So, yes, a prime lens, if you really looked, you might notice the difference. But generally, when you're looking at a photograph, and this is an important thing to consider too, when people are looking at your work, are they likely to see the difference between a prime lens and a zoom? And I would suggest for most cases they're not really going to see it when they're looking at the final photograph. And if there's an obvious distortion, then you've got a problem anyway with the lens or whatever's causing the issue. Um, so what are the other things to bear in mind? Well, prime lenses on their own generally lighter than the zoom, because a zoom, particularly high quality one, will have more glass in it, so it's heavier, so it's a bit bulkier as well. Zooms can be bulkier, but obviously what you're looking at there is you've got multiple focal lengths. So you're with one lens, one larger lens, you are replacing several lenses that give you the same reach, if you like, or the same variation in reach. So the 100 to 400, for example, well, I I can shoot anything, any focal length I like between those two extremes. How many prime lenses do I need to carry with me to achieve the same flexibility? Um this is particularly true of wildlife because, as I've said, often you can't change your position physically, you're in a vehicle, maybe, or it's just not safe to do so. So, what the lens is delivering is really important. So, I definitely use zoom lenses. I have one or two primes, but I don't use them that often. Obviously, the downside with the zoom is that you don't have the aperture capability, you've got their slower lenses than primes. And if you're if you don't understand how that works, if you don't if you understand how a lens is spec'd, um, a zoom lens will have a focal length range, obviously, to 100 to 400, but you'll then see against that a couple of um uh aperture uh ratings. So it might be um f I'm doing pulling this out of my head now, um f f4 to f5.6, you'll see that range on there. What that means is that at the shortest focal length, I'm I have f4 is my aperture, so it's not that wide, but when I zoom it all the way out, and then f6, it might even be smaller than that, uh, you know, short less than that, it could be f7.1 or something like that. So when you're looking at zoom lenses, just be aware of that because obviously, as you reduce the aperture, maximum aperture available, you are reducing the max the fastest shutter speed you can use at that magnification. So that means you might be limited to using it in fairly bright environments, or you've got to pump your ISO up, which look, it may or may not be an issue. ISO as you push it up, definitely adds noise because you're amplifying um what the sensor is seeing. But um, well, does it notice on the final image? And again, because cameras have improved so much in recent years, in a lot of cases, you can actually put the IS put the ISO up quite high and still have a perfectly acceptable image. So it depends a bit on the camera, how good your sensor is, and all that kind of stuff as well. So there are other factors, but getting to the lenses, you have to look at what's practical. And if you are likely to be carrying a big lens or carrying your gear for some distance, if you're hiking to a place to do landscapes, or if you're hiking to a place to see um wildlife, whatever else you're doing, obviously the weight that you're carrying is a factor because often if you're carrying if you're walking somewhere, you're not just carrying the camera gear, you're carrying water, you're carrying maybe um wet weather gear, all sorts of other things. So um all of these things need to be considered. And I guess the other thing is not to get too seduced by small F numbers. Um, look, it's nice to have a camera, a lens that gives you a really big aperture, it's just brilliant, it gives you so much flexibility. And a lot of these really good prime lenses, they are they really give you exceptional performance, but obviously they cost a lot more as well. And if you've got literally tens of thousands of dollars, so you might be looking well over ten thousand dollars to get one of these lenses, then that's fine. But also you've got to consider how you're gonna carry it, and also when you get to longer lenses, so when you start getting above 400, it's much, much harder to hand hold them effectively. So you're probably looking at a tripod, which is something else to carry, and um, it can also give you less flexibility if you're tracking a moving target. So, for example, um a breaching whale is really hard to use anything longer than a 400 because you need to be able to hand hold it because the chances are when a whale pops up, a breach lasts only a couple of seconds. You may not know exactly where the whale's coming up, so the chances are your lens is not focused on that point, which means that you have to move, you have to pivot onto where the whale is. You're also on a moving platform, you're on a boat at sea, so it does mean you need a pretty high shutter speed if your intention is to freeze the action. So, um, but that so you've got trade-offs on say the maximum aperture the lens will give you versus weight versus shooting by hand versus being on a tripod. You can't use a tripod on a boat, in my opinion, not not realistically. So these are just factors for the lens. So and I I really wanted to start with that because, in my experience, for sure, I keep my lenses a lot longer than I keep my camera bodies, and um also I like to have a I don't have a huge number of lenses because I tend to use zooms, as they're saying, but I'll generally have at least two with me when I'm um on a photography trip. There'll be a um a wide angle zoom and um a telephoto zoom, um and it and depending on the cameras I'm using as well. So that's thing number one. The second thing I want to just cover in this um uh podcast, this episode, is talk about the camera body because that's generally what we think about. So what's what do you need to think about there? Well, obviously, a number of things. Um, so budget is going to be a key one, and also it comes back to what are you shooting? So, again, with something like travel, so what does that impact, first of all? Well, it can look at whether you are looking at a DSLR or a mirrorless camera. So if you're looking at a reasonably high, good or a good to high performance DSLR camera, these days the second hand market is absolutely brimming with them. Uh, because a lot of people are moving over to mirrorless. Mirrorless is um, in my opinion, really come of age now. It's it's come of age um in the last uh sort of probably two to three to five years, something like that. Um but yeah, that they are really good cameras now. And um, whereas certainly 10 years ago, I I much preferred, in fact, I bought a DSLR. Mirrorless because the the difference in performance was so big, particularly um for what I do. So that's the first thing is um a mirrorless camera or a DSLR, best for what you want to do. So, what again, you what are the key differences? Well, I guess with DSLR, first of all, you've got a an optical viewfinder, so it's a mirror and you're actually seeing through the lens. If you have um a viewfinder on a mirrorless camera, it's um a little mini monitor, and they're they're different to use. So I'm I've recently got into mirrorless um more, but I uh to be honest, I don't like the viewfinder particularly, but anyway, it's that's it is what it is, it's a minor factor, but it's you're using you're using it a lot, so you need to be comfortable handling the camera. Um DSLR, if you're shooting stills, that's the first thing. DSLR is very, very good, and one of the great things about DSLR still is the wide variety of lenses you can get for them. Mirrorless are catching up, but today, 2026, DSLR still has the edge on lenses. Um, having said that, the major manufacturers are not really developing DSLR technology anymore. I don't think anybody is, and obviously the lenses, what you've got is what you're going to have for the most part. So if you are looking to keep gear for 10, 15 years, maybe longer, um, it might be worth looking at DSLR and particularly the uh sorry, the mirrorless and uh mirrorless lenses, because that means you can upgrade your system as you need to, and you will get access to new lenses as they come available. So you only you can call what that trade-off is for you, but that's one thing. Um, what are the other things to think about? Well, battery use is another one, particularly if you're using if you're a wildlife photographer and you head out into the bush and you don't get access to uh mains electricity very often. Uh, you've got to remember that DSLRs are much they use a lot less uh power than mirrorless do. Mirrorless are quite power-heavy still. Uh their durations are a lot better than they used to be. But even so, if you're gonna be out and shooting a lot of photographs and you you don't really have anywhere to recharge a battery, that you've got to consider that. So it might be taking more batteries, um, so you you've got to consider how that's gonna work for you. So that is probably the biggest difference um from a practical standpoint between DSLR and mirrorless at the moment. Uh, the big advantage of mirrorless is if you want to shoot video, so you can shoot video on DSLRs, but if you really want to get the latest like 4K and all these things, I'm not really a videographer, although I'm getting starting to get into it. Um, mirrorless is definitely much better. Uh, there's not really much comparison between the two if you're looking for high-quality video. If pretty average is fine, then you know again, you're back to a choice between DSLR and mirrorless, and you've got to look at the each factor in turn. Um, how the cameras drive, if you're used to the way a Nikon drives, mirror it's gonna be pretty much the same. Uh, I can definitely vouch for that with Canon, um, because I'm I'm currently using um Enios 5D and um an EOS 7 uh D Mark II, they're my my older DSLAs, and then I've got a um a recently bought Canon R6, so those drive pretty much the same, more or less. So that's not a big difference, but that that is important to consider. Then the next thing is do you go full frame or do you go cropped? Um, the advantage of cropped, in theory at least, is that you can have a physically smaller camera body and use physically smaller lenses because with a cropped sensor, um, because they're physically smaller, you effectively increase the focal length of the lens you're using. So I think the Canon is 1.4. I'm always bad at remembering numbers. So, in other words, what I mean by that is if you took um a Canon lens, stuck it on your DSLR, uh sorry, on your full frame camera, it doesn't matter where it's whether it's DSLR or mirrorless, you pop that lens on your full frame, and what you have is what's written on the lens, it's 100 millimeters. But if you take that same lens and pop it on a crop frame sensor, you actually have a hundred a 140 millimeter lens, so you've actually increased the reach slightly. Um, does that matter? The the chances are um some people think full frame is better than uh cropped because you've got a larger area. That's a bit more debatable, I think. Because what's more important is how many um pixels have you got on your subject. So, and the reason that's important is that pixels drive the resolution, and also it depends what you're gonna do with your final image. Are you gonna blow it up big or are you gonna just use it for social media or you just use it on a laptop screen? If you're using social media or a laptop screen, resolution is really insignificant because um you're limited to uh things like Instagram are pretty small images. Uh, I can't remember what the number is now, but if you put a large image on Instagram, it will just reduce it anyway. It it and that can introduce distortion, so you you can lose the quality of your original image. So you need to keep them small. With laptops, you'll reduce to the resolution of the laptop display. So you probably and it's probably not 24 megapixels or 30 megapixels or anything like that. So the resolution is only really a factor if you zoom in onto your photograph, or if you're gonna blow it up really big, so that you then want to have lots of detail because people are gonna be able to see the detail of the image, and obviously the resolution is determined by the number of megapixels you have, and uh so if you're comparing a 24 megapixel full frame with a 24 megapixel cropped sensor, what's the difference? Well, you've got the same resolution, but the number of or the size of each pixel on the sensor will be smaller on the cropped sensor image because you've got 24 million pixels in there, but on a physically smaller sensor, so obviously the individual pixel size is going to be less. Is that a factor? It definitely used to be, um, because the larger the physical pixel or the sensor element was, generally you'd get better performance in low light. Um, I did watch a video by someone recently which got really complicated. Um, but in essence, that that is broadly speaking, the the difference. Um, but again, it comes back to though to can you really see it, and and honestly, these days probably not. So whether you choose a full frame or a crop sensor, what may drive is how much reach you need. And if you are shooting wildlife and you want to get that extra reach, then it might well be worth looking at a cropped sensor. Because if you've zoomed in on your animal, let's say it's head, because you can get in slightly closer. So on the crop sensor, the head is filling up the viewfinder a bit more than it would on the full frame. Basically, you've got more um center points on that subject than you would actually have on the full frame. So the detail that you get on the crop sensor final image might be higher on the crop sensors than it would be on the full frame. So it's slightly counterintuitive, but that can be how it works. So it's worth giving that um a look. So I'm gonna wind things up on this episode of the podcast there. So I hope that's given you food for thought. I haven't hope I haven't waffled on too much. But basically, the primary thing to consider, first of all, what are you photographing? What's the style of photography that you are going to be using primarily? Uh, what do you need to cover off? Because that drives everything else. Because you're looking at the kind of lenses you need, you're looking at weight, how bulky is all the stuff you're lugging up about, does it matter? And also it can determine to some extent what kind of resolution you need. Are you just shooting for social media or websites where um or even laptop displays or digital projected displays? Because the resolution need for those is much lower than you would need if you're going to print images. And then having decided that, is it better to if you're generally just shooting at one focal length, then I'd recommend getting a prime lens. Uh, if you need flexibility, and if particularly if you're carrying um gear around, whether you're traveling or doing wildlife or sport, whatever, landscapes, then definitely consider um zoom lenses. They might cost a bit more than primes, but if that's what you get, they do give you that flexibility. So sort of working out what the trade-offs are. So style of photography, lenses, and then what are the important aspects of the camera body? So things like that would be autofocus, so tracking, things like that, um, power consumption, size, um, burst speeds, if that's important. So those kind of things. But the best thing I can recommend for you is that if you're not sure, just write down what is important and have a look at some specs that work for you. If you are if you're already using a camera and you're up sort of updating it, then you'll you've probably already got a pretty good idea about what you need because you'll know what's working for you on the current setup and you'll know where the shortcomings are. And that presumably is what's driving you wanting to improve the gear you have. Hopefully, it's not because you're not getting the results because that isn't always the gear, uh, but that's a different podcast. So um, I'm gonna wind it up there. Hope you found that useful. I'll speak to you again on Friday with part two. Bye for now.