what camera do you suggest?

[rtbaum]

Sapphire- As you may have surmised, there are many opinions about the components to capture an image. They all work! My advice - find the system that you are comfortable with and begin to work on things that truly matter. Learning good technique, mastering ISO, aperture, shutter speed, composition. These are the things that truly matter.

[jcuknz]

Bill/DanK ... That is what I originally said in suggesting the purchase of a bridge camera which has most of the pertinent features of the DSLR in learning about photography and then the transition to something else will be meaningful and easy.
Remember that every time you change horses you usually loose money unless you are very clever ... so the six years is an admirable target but unlikely to be achieved with digital.

[sapphyrblud]

Probably for the macro shooter having a MFT camera will give you more DoF with reasonable quality, not as much DoF as a bridge camera of course where the small sensor may be a problem. Swings and Roundabouts.

The question I may have missed reading is "What are your intentions in Photography?" Saying one wants to do landscapes, portraits, and macro doesn't tell us very much and most cameras are capable of handing those subjects these days. .

because im not strictly sure about what exactly i want to do, i need a camera which is flexible and more general; i could easily change my mind, which is why i havent yet chosen a specific field to specialize in.

[Didace]

What on earth are you on about?

Andre has been over this before. He believes his full frame is like a Ferrari. And who wouldn't want a Ferrari? It will do the job in any situation and do it fast. Who would want anything else?

[Manfred M]

because im not strictly sure about what exactly i want to do, i need a camera which is flexible and more general; i could easily change my mind, which is why i havent yet chosen a specific field to specialize in.

I would certainly suggest that you try the bridge camera route; it will give you a lot of capabilities for limited cash outlay.

If you get into landscape work or portraiture; you might want to move into a full-frame camera;

If you enjoy closeup or wild-life photography, a crop-frame might be a better answer; and

If you get into street photography, a mirrorless might be your best option.

Any decision on the more expensive camera bodies out there might be a costly mistake until you figure out which genre you like shooting the most (by the way, after converting from film and point shoot cameras; I first got a crop frame, upgraded to a full-frame 2 years later and a couple of months ago (about 3 years after getting the full-frame), I picked up a mirrorless camera as well. Today, I shoot about 85% of my shots with the full-frame, 10% with the mirrorless and perhaps 5% with the crop frame.

[chauncey]

Motivation is a term I like to bandy about...the year is 2008 and I was a veritable neophyte in the hobby of photography and had made a ton of stupid images. I wanted a camera that was capable of shooting whatever I might want to shoot, regardless of the cost. As I had used Canon, I stuck with them and bought the obscenely priced 1DsMkIII, you wouldn't believe the flak that I got, being a newbie/not deserving of it/whatnot.

I figured that paying that price would give me the motivation to learn to use it...it did!
It was the best purchase I've ever made in this here hobby.

[AB26]

This is going to be riveting ...

Yes it will be, when you explain to the OP why you spend over $5000.00 on a 1Dx body if it is no better than a 70D.

[AB26]

because im not strictly sure about what exactly i want to do, i need a camera which is flexible and more general; i could easily change my mind, which is why i havent yet chosen a specific field to specialize in.

In that case, don’t make the same mistakes I made. Get the best you can buy for your $. Something you can grow into and not out of!

If you are obsessed with Photography you will go to bed with your camera to learn how to use it.

[chauncey]

Get the best you can buy for your $. Something you can grow into and not out of!...
If you are obsessed with Photography you will go to bed with your camera to learn how to use it.

Which goes to my motivation aspect...when ya spend big bucks you have an incentive to learn
how to use it to it's fullest potential.
And you can be assured that any errors made with the image can be attributed to user errors.
And you can be assured that it can shoot anything that you might want to shoot, anytime/anyplace.

[jcuknz]

While most people here if they were using a SLR with film simply changed that for a DSLR ... and that was my inclination too .... except I had financial restraints of not wishing to borrow perhaps 20% of the purchase price and I discovered an early bridge camera made by Nikon. It cost me $2500 against the $3100 of a basic digital ... digital was expensive in those days

This cute little digital camera replaced my heavy bag of SLR and lenses and enabled me to do almost everything I could do with film ... it was an eye openner for me and it could do everything I wanted to do as I went 'mad' on photography and shot more in five months than I had done in the previous twenty years of film and coming from film I am not trigger happy using burst to increase the trigger count but rather more 'subjects' ... such was the liberation of digital

You will accept this as your right starting with digital with all the advantages it has over film ... unless you want the 'film look'.

From recent reports I would suggest you look at the Panasonic FZ1000 though it is about $950 I believe. Rather more than the $300 I suggested you spend on a simpler FZ model but likely what I would be going for if I had not gone to MFT. Indeed these days one can get a Pany G3 MFT camera for $200 second hand which is a very capable camera without the limitations of the bridge [ why I added it to my stable ] So unless you go for one of the other mirrorless that Kathy outlined it could be a good starter for you.

So many cameras, so much like each other, all turning out great results when handled well, it is a hard choice.

[Stagecoach]

Which goes to my motivation aspect...when ya spend big bucks you have an incentive to learn
how to use it to it's fullest potential.
And you can be assured that any errors made with the image can be attributed to user errors.
And you can be assured that it can shoot anything that you might want to shoot, anytime/anyplace.

I have not been too active here lately but have followed this thread with interest and whilst I tend to steer clear of these debates I had intended to post but now see Chauncey (William) has beaten me to exactly what I was going to say.

I started with a decent DSLR and one of the greatest incentives was looking at images in books and later on the web and saying to myself, hey my camera can produce results like that, wow, if I can't it's certainly not due to the tool I'm using.

As for starting and learning, I would suggest there's absolutely no difference between a decent mid range DSLR and any bridge type camera, accept the knowledge to change a lens if/as required.

Grahame

[inkista]

As for starting and learning, I would suggest there's absolutely no difference between a decent mid range DSLR and any bridge type camera, [except] the knowledge to change a lens if/as required. ...

Well, that, dual wheel control, an optical viewfinder rather than EVF or LCD liveview, burst shooting, depth of field control, shutter lag, overall responsiveness, and low-light capability for the 1/2.3" format bridge cameras. And interchangeable lenses is actually a pretty dang big one, so... not sure I'd say "absolutely no difference." Equally good for learning the exposure triangle on, maybe.

And about this you-must-shoot-full-frame nonsense:

@Andre, I know you'll never actually believe what we're saying (from personal experience, mind you) about how full frame isn't the be-all end-all until you actually shoot a lot with a full frame yourself (given that I'm seeing recent images posted here on CiC from your D200, I assume you don't have a full frame, or you'd have switched to it for any and all shooting, given your expressed views on how clearly superior full frame is against all formats, even in the face of contrary evidence), but I would recommend perusing the article: "You've got to be kidding!" on Luminous Landscape if you also think medium format is unrivaled. And realize that was written in 2008 (small sensors have gotten a LOT better since then), and that we're talking about two cameras with nearly an order of magnitude of difference in crop factors (0.5x vs. 4.5x). Really. Sensor size doesn't mean what you think it means.

Or else why would Zack Arias, who does have a Phase One, be singing the praises and shooting pro jobs with his APS-C sensored Fuji X cameras all the time? Why would David Hobby (who also has a Phase One) do the same? Why would Gregory Heisler and Annie Leibovitz--who certainly have access to all the the medium and large format gear they need--be seen shooting dSLRs on jobs. Or even smaller cameras? No one type of camera is the answer for all shooters all the time. Sensor size is only one of the features that matters on a camera. And for a lot of us, it's not even the most important one.

[FrankMi]

im a beginner so i dont want something highly complicated to use

Hi Sapphire, I understand why you feel that this may be the best approach, but with the capability of even the least expensive camera being so much more prolific than most folks are willing to master, I would offer the following thoughts.

It is usually not a good idea to invest heavily in any product until you know what you really want and why you want it - and that takes experience balanced against the specific areas that you find yourself being interested in as your knowledge and skill grow. By the time you can determine exactly what you want and why, your preferred choices may dramatically change.

As a side note, you will want to set some of your funds aside for education, software, and kit accessories as well as lenses of you go the DSLR route. My first DSLR was about $600 but ended up costing me well over $2,000 when I added in all the ancillary components to make the camera truly effective for most shooting situations. Because I shoot almost exclusively natural light, the added cost doesn't include any lighting or studio equipment.

Hope this helps!

[AB26]

@Andre, I know you'll never actually believe what we're saying (from personal experience, mind you)

Kathy,

It is not a matter of not believing what you say, it is a matter of personal experience.

I had the audacity to shoot my daughters wedding with a Sony bridge camera. It is a perfectly good camera and you can go a long way to capturing any image you wish to. In some cases it will even be better to rather use the Sony than to use the D200.
One day is one day and you capture that image you wish to have printed on a large canvass. If it is captured with a bridge camera it is fine for web display but no good for printing on an A2 canvass, especially if for any reason you have to crop the image as well.

An example is this shot of my daughter on her wedding day. An image she hates but an image I treasure. I would like to have this printed on an A2 canvass and hang it on a wall, but it gets so darn noisy when enlarged it is not worth printing any larger than A4. If that same image was shot with the D200 it would have been possible to enlarge. If it was shot with a FF camera it would have been even better.

It is not a matter of not believing what you folks say it is a matter of capturing that precious moment in time that will never ever be repeated again and you did not have the right tool to do the job to make that moment an everlasting moment.
Do you really want me to advise others to make the same mistake?

Ps. By the way, Annie Leibowitz uses a Leica S2.

[inkista]

You obviously missed my links on using smaller cameras, because they both clearly show Annie Leibovitz does not use her S2 all the time. In the first image, she's shooting her own self-portrait for a newspaper with a Canon Powershot G10, and in the second, she's got a Fuji X100 slung around her neck (just as she used to shoot with a Konica Hexar [an autofocus fixed-lens 35/2 rangefinder-style camera] back in the day). You can find numerous images of her shooting with Canon and Nikon dSLRs professionally, as well. In the video of her shooting the Queen, you'll note she's using a Canon dSLR (this was IDed on a much better quality, now gone, youtube video by David Hobby). Why on earth would she ever limit herself to a single camera? (or not upgrade to the H5?)

And Andre, going from a 2005ish 1/2.3"-format bridge camera to a 2008 APS-C dSLR is not a reliable guide for guesstimating how much improvement you'll get going up in format from APS-C to full frame with today's cameras. Your print enlargement issues aren't hampered by the fact you shot with a tiny sensor. It's that it was probably a pre-2008 tiny sensor with <8 MP resolution. Today, a bridge camera (say, a Canon SX700) can cleanly shoot at iso 1600, with a resolution of 16MP. Now project that on what an APS-C sensor of 2014 can do vs. a an older full frame. You've heard the argument that megapixel counts don't matter any more? That's because they're all high enough now for most work (billboards excepted). And sensor performance is getting high enough that past 1"-format sizes, the differences are starting to count less and less. They're still there, but they're small (within a stop or two) and getting smaller.

It's a game of diminishing returns. You pay 2x more for full frame over crop, but you don't get 2x the performance improvement. And the curve gets flatter and flatter with every passing sensor generation. You may think that going from a 5x crop bridge to a 1.5x crop dSLR is similar to going from 1.5x crop dSLR to a 1x crop dSLR. It's not.

The higher you go, the more money you spend, the smaller the gains become. This is what we're trying to tell you, and what you're not hearing. You believe what you want. You go and spend $2000 on a full frame body and $3000 upgrading your DX glass to FX. And then you'll find out what we're telling you is true. Just don't say we didn't warn you.

[chauncey]

The higher you go, the more money you spend, the smaller the gains become

Absolutely true! It all depends on a combination of your degree of anal retentiveness combined with
the depth of your pockets. If your pockets are somewhat shallow and you don't demand the closest to
absolute perfection possible???...in the end, it's a judgment call. Like any other purchasing decision,
ya gotta balance needs/wants/budgets.

Yes...there are Pros out there that choose to make do with less but...IMHO, they possess that certain undefinable something that goes beyond the simple act of squeezing the shutter.

[AB26]

Your print enlargement issues aren't hampered by the fact you shot with a tiny sensor. It's that it was probably a pre-2008 tiny sensor with <8 MP resolution.

How about a Sony DSC HX100V = 16MP sensor.

Annie will also tell you that it is fine to shoot with an iPhone. Easy when you do have a S2 to DO THE JOB.

I think William (Chauncey) understands what I am on about! If you got the money to go better why settle for less?

I still regret that day I was standing in the shop looking at a Sony A33 and decided to buy the DSC HX100V instead, because I was going to save $400. I should have bought the A33 instead!

[Polar01]

Andre would have buying the Sony A33 instead of the DSC HX100V made you a better photographer?

Cheers: Allan

[AB26]

Andre would have buying the Sony A33 instead of the DSC HX100V made you a better photographer?

Cheers: Allan

Yes Allan, it would have. I would have been able to get shots that is impossible to get with the HX100v.

The HX100v takes forever to switch on, the buffer takes forever to clear after a burst. The EVF is useless for panning, the AF system is slow. It does not have enough functions to do what I want it to do.

I do believe a better camera can make you a better Photographer. It might not make you a better artist or develop your artistic inclination but it can help the Artist in the Photographer develop skills to capture better images.

[Manfred M]

Yes Allan, it would have. I would have been able to get shots that is impossible to get with the HX100v.

The HX100v takes forever to switch on, the buffer takes forever to clear after a burst. The EVF is useless for panning, the AF system is slow. It does not have enough functions to do what I want it to do.

I do believe a better camera can make you a better Photographer. It might not make you a better artist or develop your artistic inclination but it can help the Artist in the Photographer develop skills to capture better images.

Andre – while I understand where you are going with this directionally, I would have to agree with you if you said a “better” camera with “better” lenses allow you to get good images in more marginal shooting conditions. Yes, shutter lag and buffer write times may be an issue when you are shooting action, but are perhaps less of an issue when shooting a landscape. Likewise, a better camera and lens may let you get that twilight shot, whereas a lower end camera might not.

I find that my high end gear excels at extending my ability to get those shots taken in marginal conditions or when I want to make large paper size prints, but a standard, run-of-the-mill shot, that is posted on the internet; I would rather doubt that one could figure out which camera was used without drilling down into the metadata.