So you thought I was through?
No, because we have only begun to talk
about getting you a 'good' camera for holidays or your birthday or
Guy Fawkes Day.
So to start, let's define good as a
digital single lens reflex camera of 12 megapixels or better with
interchangeable lenses and at least 720 video capability.
Why?
A digital single lens reflex camera is
now and for the foreseeable future the finest tool for picture making
you can put hands on. It is just the BEST. You can change the lenses
to fit what you are photographing, take pictures in all kinds of
light and weather conditions and when the BIG ONE comes you can video
the panic and get on Youtube!
Why 12 megapixels?
They make cameras with forty
megapixels, why should I be satisfied with just a dozen. Cause we are
trying to get the dog to hunt for less than you paid for your car.
Sure you can get a humongous number of pixels and I am sure that they
would come in handy if you are trying to copy US currency so you can
make your own money and get it past the gimlet-eyed Treasury Agents,
(You know they have no sense of humor or proportion, you know that
and they will catch you and kick you around the parking lot) so you
really don't need all that many pixels so you won't be tempted, but
if you are remember to run the new paper through the dryer a few
times so that it looks like it has been in circulation for a while
and didn't just come from you HP.
And if you are not going to try to make
your own money then you won't need so many megapixels and the
Treasury Agents can go back to beating the tar out of people who jump
over the White House fence and that is a much better use of their
time.
So let's say that twelve megapixels is
good enough for starters. Sure if you fall in love and win the lotto
and learn how to use all of the controls on that twelve megapixel
camera then you can go out and buy a forty megapixel whizzbang and
show it to all of your friends and be on a first name basis at the
bank cause you will need just about the GNP of Moldavia if you are
really going to buy one.
And because I want you to concentrate
on picture taking and not on how you are going to pay for the beast.
Remember this is going to be a really big adventurer and if you are
so worried about what it costs you won't have time to enjoy the ride.
Also with a twelve megapixel DSLR you
will have a tool which you can work with and grow with and play with
for years and still not completely tame.
But it is just too complicated.
Yes, I won't kid you DSLRs are very
complicated, but everyone of them has an Auto setting which will
allow you to use the camera like a big ole point 'n' shoot. Better
still most have a P setting which will check thousands of
pre-programed scenes and select the one which most closely matches
your scene and adjust the camera accordingly. So without much effort
you can put the animal to work right out of the box.
That means it isn't all that
complicated unless you want it to be.
They cost an arm and a leg and more
than it takes to send the kid back to school in the fall.
They can, but one of the other reasons
why we are talking about twelve megapixel cameras is they have all of
the bells and whistles of their big brethren without the price tag.
In fact having completed an informal survey, they can be had for
under three hundred dollars in almost every case. (That's Nikon but
we'll talk about that later.)
Three hundred dollars is a lot of
money, but it is money you'd spend on many things without so much as
a blink. The phone in your back pocket, the video game console by
your TV, the cable package you got because you just had to see the
final season of Boardwalk Empire and then you wanted to take a look
at Outlander and see if trans-dimensional adultery is as much fun as
they said it was and the thing on the sofa just wanted to see if that
lanky Irish Miss was going to get nekkid and she did and did pretty
nekkid pretty well for someone committing sin in two time zones.
So the cost isn't more than you would
spend on many things and the camera you use, no not the one in your
phone, they don't count, probably cost nearly as much without being
able to do nearly as much so this is a good purchase.
So now you know it doesn't cost more
than the appropriation bill for Senate toilet paper and it isn't as
complicated as trying to read the congressional record it is still
terrifying, right?
Who wants to go out on the dark and
scary Internet alone to try and find one of those under three hundred
dollar cameras. You do and you can with just a little bit of work.
The first and the most important thing
you need to know is what you are looking for. Now some of you will
want a Nikon and I can't help that although I hear there are twelve
step groups for that sort of thing and some of you will want a Canon,
almost as bad, but better and some of you will want a Sony, name
identification gone mad and some of you will want a Pentax and then
there are a whole bunch of others. So, you gotta pick.
This site will help more than anything
I can say. You find a camera you like and enter it and then you can
compare it to any other camera and get a side by side look, a
numerical rating and a list of features. Snapsort will also give you
places where you can buy the one you want, but they are almost always
more expensive than the places I am going to give you, like...
These guys are very, very good and
their inventory is always first rate and I bought my own much loved
Pentax there and they did right by me so I think they will do right
by you.
B&H will do almost everything which
KEH can do and they do it almost as well. I have used them and they
did exactly what they said they were going to do and they did it when
they said they were going to do it and the followed instructions
which is more than I can say for Amazon so they are all right by me.
Adorama is not one that I have used,
but they are one of the ones which you could use and they will do the
same sort of stuff which B&H and KEH will do and you can count on
them and trust them and buy from them.
I can hear they grousing and
complaining, “Why can't you just buy 'Merican for crying out loud?”
And you can and I have listed three good American sources, but I
would be doing you no favors if I didn't list Henry's. Henry's lists
on Ebay a lot, but they also have a real, ordinary, normal online
shop and you will find that they have some of the best bargains on
cameras in the ether.
So now you know where to buy and how to
find out what to buy and you've narrowed the field to three or four
brands and you are ready to but, what next?
You have to decide what you really want
to buy cause if you get something just because you think it is the
bestest thing since Sofia Vergara, and Sofia Vergara is pretty closet
to the bestest thing, you will not be a happy camper.
No, silly say yes to Sofia, but when
you are thinking about a camera devote a little less eyeball and a
little more brain.
Now go and shop and think and plan and
we'll meet back here in a day or so and talk about quality.
out quality.
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