WARNING: This is not a treatise on how to take professional photographs. Rather, it is my attempt to put equipment in it's proper perspective. A hopeful by-product is better photographs.
I am continually asked what kind of camera I use and what cameras I recommend. I can tell you what I use, but the other question is more difficult. I carry two cameras: a Sony A700 with four lenses and a Canon SD800 IS. I have a belt pack for the Sony and the Canon goes in a shirt or jacket pocket. I have had to resort to DSLR with Image Stabilization because of tremors that I have developed in the past 6 months. I carry a small, light tripod for night photographs, and a polarizing filter. Sometimes I carry a small dedicated flash. That's it. What cameras do I recommend? Any camera that gives you what you NEED (what we WANT is a different story).
Taking pictures is nothing more than getting an image through a lens (which can be a piece of glass or a hole in a cigar box or shoe box) and onto a piece of film or an image sensor. Everything else is physics and chemistry. Most people don't know the science behind the photographic process, the physics of light, or composition and design. Most people want clear, in-focus pictures. Mostly, we want memories.
True story. In Brussels, Belgium 2 years ago I met a man with an absolutely marvelous camera system that he was lugging all over Europe. I was interested in the camera and how he liked it and he told me that, "It takes great pictures, but I wish it wasn't so heavy." It was a beautiful camera, complete with a bag and four lenses, and a laptop computer so that he could use just one 2G SD card and transfer his pictures to the laptop at night. That way he did not have to purchase more memory and thus, saved some money. I asked him how big he made his pictures and he told me 4x6 inches. Then he got really excited and told me about the "big" one he had made. "How big?" I asked him. "Eight by ten," he said proudly, "And the salesman told me that I can make even 11x14's and 8x12's really well." I swear that this is the truth.
I told him that with his 12 megapixel (MP) camera he could make "good" pictures to 24x30 INCHES, and excellent 20x24's. He looked at me strangely and said, "Boy, I really got screwed then, didn't I?" I said, "No, you didn't get screwed, you got a lot more camera than you need, but it's a great camera." He then told me, "You know, I paid over $8,000 for this camera." I said, "Again, for what you got, it's not a terrible price, it's just a lot more than you need." He shook his head and said, "All the doctors in our practice go to this guy." I told him that he should find someone who didn't know that he was a doctor and who wouldn't sell him and his colleagues more than they needed. Then I suggested that he go home and take a photography course at his local community college and decorate his home with things that he has done, especially pictures of his family. He left happy saying that what he really needed was someone to carry the damn stuff. (At last contact, he had finished his second photography course. He emailed some of his pictures of his wife, kids, and dog from which he has had large prints made. They were super, one shot of his dog was a show-stopper, and he is still looking for someone to carry the damn equipment.)
The moral of the story is obviously to buy only as much camera as you need. This requires questions that the salesman needs to ask, the answers to which you need to know. They are not complicated. These are the main questions:
1. How big do you want to make your pictures?
2. What kind of pictures do you want to take? Family, sports, vacation, general, close-up?
3. As a rule, how many pictures do you take?
4. Approximately how old are you?
5. Is this camera more for your family, for vacations, just general use, for you alone?
6. What is your price range?
7. How much do you want to carry?
There are other questions, but I deem these to be the most important and this is why:
The maximum size of a finished picture tells the salesman how many megapixels (MP) in size will suit your needs. I started with a 5.1MP camera and made perfectly acceptable 16x20 prints. If the maximum size picture you want to make is 8x10, all you need is a 3.2MP camera. If you don't want to fiddle with controls on the camera, don't spend the money for a camera with lots of controls. Ask yourself what you want, honestly.
The kind of pictures that you take has a big influence in the equation. How much you know and how much you want to learn is important here too. If you are going to take pictorials and semi-posed pictures, you don't need a camera that can stop action through the use of a fast shutter speed. If you want to take pictures of your grandchildren playing soccer, that's another story. (I'll talk briefly about lenses in Part C.)
Some people need just a basic 3.2MP camera because you are not going to take many pictures and all you need is a small "point and shoot" (PnS) that is uncomplicated. With a camera that uses AA batteries that are available anywhere and a 1GB SD card (memory), you should be set for anything.
Age is actually important. As we age, we are not as steady as we were when we were younger, and image stabilization (IS) will help. If you go to places where flash is not allowed (most museums and many cathedrals in the world), IS is worth having even though there is additional cost.
If you need nothing more than a general purpose camera, that is all you should buy. All the wonderful things that you can do with a sophisticated camera are of no use if you don't use the camera enough to remember what to do.
Your price range is what you can afford.
Bells and whistles are expensive. Don't buy more than you need or can afford. A lightly used, inexpensive camera sitting on a shelf creates a lot less guilt than an expensive one. You can always raise your standards when you have more money and more knowledge. Also, if you can wait, that "nicer" camera will probably come DOWN in price as newer models come out. When new cameras are released, the gadgeteers buy them and sell their barely used cameras on EBAY.
I used to have a very sophisticated film camera system that I dragged all over Europe (all my pictures and negatives from before 1999 were lost in a flood, sad to say). When I bought my first digital camera (Sony DCSF717) I rediscovered photography that wasn't WORK. It was so nice to not have a bag of lenses and accessories to lug around. I have since replaced that camera with the one's listed above.
My suggestion about how much to spend on a camera is simple. If the camera is so expensive that you can't afford a trip, pick a less expensive camera and go on the trip. The camera is a tool, the trip is an "experience." The cemeteries are filled with people who left behind expensive toys.
Speaking of cemeteries, whenever I think about or go to a cemetery, I am reminded of a man who was walking through a cemetery and came upon a very old man cleaning up a grave site. The traveler looked at the old man and said, "How old are you?" "I am 98 years old," piped up the old man, proudly. The traveler said, "Wow, it doesn't even pay for you to go home, does it?"
Last thoughts. Buy a camera that you can afford and want to learn to use. Take lots of pictures; the more pictures that you take, the greater are the odds that you will get one that is a great photograph. Wide-angle and telephoto lenses are convenience items that 70% of the time just mean that you don't have to get as close to or far away from your subject (see Part C). Remember that most amateur photographers take pictures from two distances: too close and too far. Think about it.
The lesson to be learned is that a camera will not give you experiences; it will give you memories of those experiences. The experiences are more important than the camera used to record them.
Please go to Part B.