Buy a SLR, photography and video are more balanced. How to choose?

Budget is the first factor in choosing a camera ... because you can't buy anything without money. ...

Seriously, many people don't have a budget when choosing a camera. They went to the store and were told twice that they bought an expensive equipment, but they didn't necessarily buy the equipment that suited them. Store sales will be vigorously promoted because of the high commission of a certain brand, and consumers will often be misled to buy expensive and inappropriate equipment under such promotion means. As a result, an advanced SLR was used twice after being bought home, and then it was put in the cupboard and never used again. So, make a budget for yourself and choose the most suitable equipment in the budget. Budget has little to do with photo quality. Most of us are not billionaires, so it is impossible to buy the best equipment indefinitely, and the best equipment is not necessarily the best for us. Within the budget, do what you can. If the budget is insufficient, consider second-hand or previous-generation equipment.

At present, the upgrading speed of photographic equipment is too fast. As long as a digital camera is properly maintained, it can be used for three to five years or even longer. There is no need to worry that buying the previous generation of equipment will affect the quality of photos. In photography, the fuselage is often worthless, and only high-quality optical lenses can stand the test of time. So, if you choose a interchangeable mirror camera as your camera, I suggest you keep a part of your budget on the lens. Using the previous generation model will make your photos have better quality.

2. Decide your own investment in photography.

When choosing equipment, I often ask them whether to buy a camera to learn photography or take pictures of life. There are many ways to learn photography. Some people will seriously go to the studio to light up and shoot models at high speed. Some people just learn a little fur and share it online, so they enjoy being praised. There may be great differences in equipment selection between two different photographic mentalities.

For ordinary users who take photos of their lives, the card machine and even the iPhone are already the most suitable devices. What they need is a portable automatic exposure photography tool, which can be easily uploaded to the network without a lot of post-production. Recently, Casio's "selfie artifact" is so expensive, just because the skin filter is built into the fuselage. In photographic equipment, such a selfie camera is actually only worth 3,000 yuan, which can be fried to a sky-high price. The big reason is that ordinary consumers will not spend time studying how photography skills can make photos better, but only hope that the equipment in their hands can provide the best photos in the simplest way. This is why we can still find the automatic mode on some high-end equipment.

As for some friends who are interested in learning photography, a camera in manual mode is the most basic requirement. Up to now, more than 98% of my photos are taken in manual mode, but now most advanced digital cameras have four exposure modes of APSM. Semi-automatic and manual exposure modes give the photographer more control over the camera and make it easier to achieve the desired effect.

3. Decide on the subject to shoot.

The subject matter of shooting has a great influence on the choice of equipment. Life photos, street snapshots, landscapes, commodities, portraits, sports, ecology, artistic creation ... Different themes have different requirements for equipment. The most widely used camera for photographing objects is a single mirror reflector. In most cases, SLR can meet the needs of the subject for photographic equipment. However, the size and weight of SLR are not acceptable to everyone. In view of this, the rise of mirrorless cameras has gradually replaced the low-end SLR market in recent years. However, the mirrorless camera is still a new camera type in the market, and the excellent lenses supporting automatic exposure and focusing are still limited. In addition, there is still a big gap between operability and SLR, so SLR is still the mainstream choice for photographers who shoot a wide range of subjects.

For the camera body selection of shooting theme, more consumers just want to take photos of life, travel and snapshots. For this kind of users, I suggest choosing a light camera. Users who have slight requirements for image quality can consider high-end consumer products and m43 systems. Compared with the general SLR, the portable design makes users more interested in using the camera. The higher the camera attendance, the higher the chance of taking good photos.

4, shooting format

The format here refers to the type of camera photosensitive element. There are many kinds of cameras now, which are below 135 frames and are divided into two categories: digital and film. Digital and film are two completely different imaging media, one is photoelectric signal transmission, the other is chemical action, digital is analog signal, linear exposure is nonlinear, adjustable is non-adjustable ISO, noise is particles, you can check the contrast system ... They are fundamentally different. Although digital photography is far more convenient than film photography, they cannot replace each other. The stereoscopic impression and tone of film are far better than digital photos. Even so, when a novice chooses his first camera, I would recommend buying a digital camera. Real-time coverage and simple post-production of digital photography will make beginners progress faster. However, if you have a soft spot for film photography, you can choose the film machine as your first one.

In addition to the classification of digital films, photosensitive elements also have differences in size. The following is the mainstream format to distinguish from large to small.

I. Large format

Most of them are commercial photography and medical images, with wet printing as the photographic medium. The author has not explored the framework of this photographic equipment. The use of this kind of photographic equipment, because it requires darkroom skills, can be easily used by non-novices, so this article will not elaborate on it.

Two. Medium format

The middle frame is a photographic frame with a width of 6cm on one side, including a digital version and a film version. This kind of camera has some structures that can separate the body, lens and back, and also has an integrated camera body. Most digital Chinese formats exist in the form of the back of digital cameras, mainly for business users who require high resolution. A second-hand digital mobile phone also costs 10 thousand yuan to come back. However, with the recent maturity of high-pixel photography technology in Quan Huafu, the position of medium format in commercial photography may decline.

The cost of film media format is much lower than that of digital back. In terms of consumer use, there are various camera designs, such as TLR, Hasselblad, Lomography Belair and so on. Because of its large format, the picture quality will be relatively delicate and the three-dimensional effect will be stronger.

Three. full frame digital slr

The size of Quan Huafu Quan Huafu (FF) is 36 x24mm, and its ratio of 3: 2 is also close to the golden ratio (1: 1.62). Since Kodak 1934 was introduced, with the gradual elimination of the market, Quan Huafu has become the mainstream photography format in the consumer market. For a novice photographer, the word Quan Huafu may be unfamiliar. In fact, this is the usual format of 36 movies. Because the Quan Huafu format has occupied the consumer market for nearly 3/4 centuries, the lens formats that come into contact with the market are mostly based on Quan Huafu.

Quan Huafu equivalent focal length characteristics

Quan Huafu SLR actually appeared in the market as early as 2002, but because of its high price, most users in Quan Huafu chose to take photos of Quan Huafu with film at that time. To this day, movies are still the cheapest choice in Quan Huafu. In recent years, due to the progress of CMOS technology, the price of digital cameras in Quan Huafu has been reduced to the level that ordinary consumers can afford, and Sony has also developed the first full-frame camera, without any adverse market. The excellent performance of full-frame camera in high ISO allows photographers to take better photos in low light. At the same time, because the interchangeable lens cameras in the movie era are mostly designed in Quan Huafu format, a large number of old lenses can only exert their original power in Quan Huafu.

For beginners, if financial resources permit, a full-frame camera can be said to be in one step. However, with the improvement of image quality, the weight and volume of the camera will also increase at the same time, which is also a key point that novices need to pay attention to when purchasing cameras.

Four. APS-H

APS-H is a rare digital camera format. The mainstream cameras are Leica and Canon 1D series, and the conversion ratio of its 135 frame is X 1.3, which means the original 5065mm lens. Under APS-H, the viewing angle will become 135 format. This format is a transitional product of the development of digital photosensitive elements from APS-C to Quan Huafu. There are basically no lenses specially designed for APS-H in the market, and most of them only use Quan Huafu and some APS-C lenses. Because it is a transitional product, I believe this format will gradually fade out in the future, and novices don't have to pay attention to such products.

Verb (abbreviation of verb) APS-C.

APS-C is one of the mainstream formats of digital photography since the first digital SLR. The conversion ratio of 135 format is X 1.5 (Canon is X 1.6). The emergence of this format is due to the failure of the early consumer digital SLR to make the mainstream Quan Huafu format at that time with low cost and technical limitations. Because the frame is relatively small, only the central part of Quan Huafu lens can be used when shooting. In order to solve this problem, the manufacturer has developed a lens specially designed for APS-C format, and the imaging ring only covers the photosensitive elements of APS-C, so there will be visible dark corners and imaging rings in APS-C lens under Quan Huafu. However, the lens diameter of APS-C lens is smaller than that of Quan Huafu, and the manufacturing cost is lower, so it is suitable for low-end users. Because APS-C camera is affordable and can provide excellent photos, it will be a good choice for beginners.

Intransitive verb M43/half code

M43 format, the size is a quarter of that of Quan Huafu, and the conversion ratio of 135 format is X2. The original prototype of this format comes from the Olympus pen in the movie era. On the premise of balancing the photo quality and camera portability of mirrorless cameras, two camera factories, Olympus and Panasonic, followed the design concept of Olympus Pen and developed the M43 system. For beginners, M43 represents the balance between thinness and quality. For some users who have requirements on weight and quality, M43 will be a good choice.

Seven. Consumer photosensitive element

Consumer-grade photosensitive elements refer to photosensitive elements used in consumer-grade cameras or mobile phones. Due to the small body of this kind of camera, most of the photosensitive elements are only the size of nails. Because of the high pixels per inch, this type of camera usually does not perform well at high sensitivity. However, in recent years, CMOS has made great progress in high sensitivity, and the acceptable ISO of high-end consumer cameras has reached 1600 or even higher. For some users who can't change lenses or need a portable camera because they already have a SLR, this camera is the best choice.

Eight. others

In addition to the above formats, there are other types of movies and numbers. The well-known ones are Nikon's CX irreversible system, Pentax's subminiature Q system, Fuji's Instax and Polaroid, etc. Lomogrpahy also has an ultra-small 1 10 film. Although this format will be sought after by a group of users because of the non-mainstream photography format, it is better for users interested in learning photography to use the camera back to the mainstream format first.

5. Do you want to change the mirror?

The biggest difference between a detachable camera and a non-detachable camera lies in the expansion performance of the camera. The lens in the world can't have super wide-angle and telephoto capabilities at the same time-even if it does, it will cost a smaller aperture and inferior image quality. All lenses have their advantages and disadvantages, and the camera with interchangeable lenses is just to solve this problem. For ordinary users who take photos of life, the cost of one more lens is a series of problems, such as dust, lens cost, weight and so on. Although the format of non-interchangeable lens may not be as good as that of interchangeable lens camera, this camera can still take high-quality photos when used properly. In particular, some manufacturers have developed cameras in APS-C format, and the photo quality is even higher than that of interchangeable lens cameras at the same price. Most of these cameras work hard on macro, zoom ability and aperture size. Due to the lack of innate format, this field is full of flowers.

For cameras with interchangeable lenses, most different manufacturers have their own ring connection systems. Nikon F, Canon EOS, Sony Alpha, Sony E, Pentax K, Panasonic and Olympus M43, Leica M, classical M42 and so on, each system has its own characteristics, it is difficult to define who is better than who. On this basis, it can be roughly divided into three categories, namely SLR reflective cameras, mirrorless cameras and linkage ranging cameras. In use, the single-mirror reflex camera can easily take high-speed and accurate photos because of its own design. Due to the progress of science and technology, mirrorless cameras are now very close to the level of SLR. On the contrary, the price of linked ranging camera is generally higher because of its complex optical structure.

Lenses from different manufacturers generally do not communicate with each other, but lenses with long flange distance can be connected to systems with short flange distance through connecting rings. The mirrorless camera is called the "universal plug" because its flange distance is very short, which means that almost all other factories' lenses can be connected to the mirrorless camera. For some users who plan to double repair the system, we should also consider the possibility of lens intercommunication.

6. Weight

Although camera factories have been trying to reduce the weight of cameras in the development process, there are still great differences in the weight of different types of cameras. Weight and image quality are usually inversely proportional. The more you can improve the image quality, the heavier the camera will be. For young people, one or two kilograms of equipment in a short time may not be a great burden, but for some older users or users with muscle and joint problems, the weight of 100g also has a great impact. Not everyone can hire private frames, which will be very inconvenient in practice.

In addition, many users with SLR have a portable mobile phone with them. Although SLR is superior in operation and image quality, its size and weight are not ideal partners for a long time. Many people bought a SLR to go home, and found that the weight and volume of the SLR were not easy to take, so they went out every day to put aside the newly bought equipment or even sell it. Personally, a mirrorless camera can complete most of his photographic creation without taking pictures in necessary occasions (such as activities, sports and high-speed shutter synchronization). If there is no such demand, I suggest buying a mirrorless camera or an advanced non-interchangeable camera. With proper skills, you can definitely shoot works as good as a SLR.

7. The influence of brand on photos

The battle between brands should be a controversial issue since the invention of cameras. Leica vs Zeiss, Nikon vs Canon, etc. I believe that a casual look on the internet will lead to a lot of discussion. The difference of each brand, in the digital world, greatly affects its color. For some users who only take jpg format, because the process of photo digitization must go through signal conversion operation, the operating procedures preset by the manufacturer have a great influence on jpg photos. But for users who shoot RAW files, because the color control of photos can be controlled by themselves, the hair color of manufacturers is not a very important consideration. Therefore, when buying a camera, if you don't consider the post-production photos, it is worth noting the jpg stipulated by the manufacturer.

Compared with jpg, camera brand is more important to its system. Almost every manufacturer has its own optical system, most of which are not universal, thus creating the advantages of every camera factory. Nikon's creative lighting system and precision lighting system are the best in the industry; Canon's characteristic portrait hair color is the best choice for portrait photographers … and so on. Due to the large amount of funds required for the midway switching system, users should decide to use the series of the factory from the first camera, rather than a single camera or lens, so as to reduce the possible cost of "midway switching".

Many novice photographers have great misunderstandings about camera brands. But for a user who really knows how to shoot, a photo will not enhance its value because of shooting equipment, and a good photo will not reduce its artistry because of the use of cheap equipment. Therefore, it is better to talk as little as possible about the brand.

8. Other factors

In addition to the above factors, many cameras have specific functions, such as various filters, wifi transmission, online uploading, various shooting modes, shooting and so on. In fact, they are just a small foil, which has no effect on the quality of photos at all. These functions are all dispensable for a person who can shoot, and the bigger part is the propaganda technique of camera manufacturers. When choosing a camera, leave these flashy functions behind.