Don’t buy the latest camera

Lately I’ve been thinking that I’ve bought all the wrong equipment. If you’re thinking about making a new purchase, this is for you. Tell me if this sounds familiar.

I fell into the trap with camera equipment. That is, the marketing trap that makes me believe that I need all the latest features and best equipment. Maybe you’ve fallen into this trap too. Perhaps you even understand that the latest features aren’t necessary, but you can afford them. It is a trap though, and one that has been fine tuned and crafted by the manufacturers with decades of expertise marketing to make you feel that you need the latest product.

Canon, Nikon, Sony would all like you to believe that you can’t live without the latest features that they only recently released in their cameras. They’re extremely effective.

I’d like to argue against this. It’s going to be hard to compete with these marketing folks. But here goes…

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way. Price! It’s probably the best reason you’d buy something older. The price difference between the latest equipment and last year’s models cannot be ignored. Even more so when you factor in older models are likely on the used market.

Older equipment will still take excellent pictures. Not just passable, but excellent pictures. At the end of the day, this is what matters. Ask yourself where is my picture going to end up? Are you sharing it to the web? Are you printing it? Most of the time the picture is shrinking down to a paltry instagram size resolution. Not sure what you needed 60+ megapixels of resolution for.

In a lot of ways, the older, dedicated autofocus systems in DSLRs (and SLRs) were better than what we have in the mirrorless world. Those old phase detect systems locked on quickly. The biggest difference here is that modern mirrorless offer 300+ autofocus points. This doesn’t bother me since I generally use a center focus point and recompose like photographers have been doing for a century. It’s quicker than moving an autofocus with a thumbstick or even touching the screen with a touch-to-focus back panel.

There are some cons.

Resolution

Megapixels are an overhyped stat line that was used in marketing. It’s not that important, unless you like to crop a lot. I tend to barely crop these days. True, when I was just getting back into photography, I missed the shot quite a lot and needed to crop quite a bit in post production. That was my sloppiness. I was constantly tilting my horizons, and not in an artful, purposeful way. I’d not think about the edges of the frame when composing and just capture the shot. After editing many of my own mistakes, I started to become conscious of these decisions when I was shooting and correcting in camera. I still give myself some leeway around the borders for minimal rotation and cropping, but it’s really just a precaution.

Dynamic Range

Newer sensors are pretty amazing when it comes to dynamic range. To be able to rescue shadows 15 stops underexposed is great. Though, that 15 stops that is advertised in more like 7-10. You’ll introduce grain and noise after that. Regardless, it’s a nice feature. It’s also a feature that you hopefully won’t need often. Unless you’re creating HDR images by developing an image with extreme exposure differences for the highlights and the shadows then composing them to make a final image, you probably will never need this type of dynamic range. Even then, the older DSLR’s have a decent amount of dynamic range for this. If you think a 12 year old DSLR has bad dynamic range, pick up a film camera. Then, for extra fun, feed it slide film.

Again, this is something that you get better at doing with practice though. You’ll get better results, regardless of the equipment if you learn to expose properly in camera.

It should be said, that this is also a hinderance. Because there is so much leeway to “save” the picture later, you don’t spend the time to get the picture right in camera. The result is never as good as if you had achieved it in camera. If you have a camera with less dynamic range, you’ll definitely learn how to expose better.

Shooting style

This matters. If you’re shooting landscapes, autofocus with face detection might not be that important to you. Autofocus at all might not be that important to you.

I find myself using vintage glass with adapters quite a bit these days. I like the imperfect look of it. It has a quality that is enjoyable. None of them have autofocus. I find them quite usable. I use them for everything, from street photography to landscapes. If this is you, you’re wasting your money on fancy autofocus systems.

As far as I can tell, face/eye detection autofocus is for the working professional that has limited time with a model. My subjects and style of photography rarely need face detection.