The first thing you need to know about buying a digital camera in 2024 is that it’s virtually impossible to buy a bad one. Chances are, you have a great camera in your hands right now. For many people, a smartphone is a good enough camera, but if you need a camera in addition to your phone, read on.
Today’s digital cameras are, almost without exception, amazing. If you learn how to use your camera and understand the basics of photography like composition, light, and timing, you can take great images with any camera on the market. But you want a camera that works for you, not just one that’s technically superior.
The right camera for you depends on what you want to capture, how you want to use it, where you’ll be shooting, and a million questions only you can answer. To help you out, we’ll walk you through the basics of the main components of a camera you need to know, breaking down the jargon and explaining them at a practical level.
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What kind of photo do you want to take?
The first step in finding the best camera for you is to know, at least to some extent, what you want to do with it. For example, if you know you’ll be taking photos of your kids’ sports games, you’ll want to pay particular attention to the accuracy of the autofocus and the speed at which it captures images (measured in frames per second, or fps). If you plan on also producing video, get one with high-quality video features, like 4K 100 fps for slow-motion content and the ability to eliminate or minimize rolling shutter. If you love astrophotography, you’ll want to pay particular attention to sensor noise.
While any camera manufactured today can take great images, some are better than others at certain niche tasks, like the examples above. Knowing the type of images you want to create will help you narrow your search. If you’re new to photography and don’t know what you’ll end up loving, that’s okay. Don’t worry about high-end niche features like super-fast autofocus. Instead, focusing on entry-level cameras designed for the average user will also save you money. Invest that money in quality lenses.
Camera Glossary
- ISOISO dates back to the days of film and was a standardized way of indicating how sensitive film was to light. It was adopted by digital to maintain a similar brightness to what we’re accustomed to with film photography. So if you set your digital camera to ISO 100, you’re getting roughly the same base level of brightness as a film speed of 100. ISO can range from 50 up to six digits depending on the camera. The lowest ISO for a camera is sometimes called the “base ISO.” This value has the least noise. As the ISO number increases, there is more noise, but so does the sensitivity to light. The less light there is, the higher the ISO you should use.
- Aperture: The size of the opening inside the lens. The wider the aperture, the more light that enters the lens. A small aperture is sometimes called “fast” – an f/1.2 lens is fast. A narrow aperture (f/8 or f/16) allows less light into the lens. Aperture affects the depth of field (how much of a photo is in focus), so a wider aperture means less of the image will be in focus, creating the popular “bokeh” blur effect.
- Shutter speed: This previously meant that the mirror raised to expose the film or digital sensor to light. In mirrorless cameras, that no longer means that, but now means the amount of time the sensor is exposed to light. Depending on the camera, this may be measured in fractions of a second, such as 1/125th of a second, or down to whole seconds. The longer the shutter is open, the more light is let in. This means that anything that moves while the shutter is open will be blurred. For example, water flowing over rocks will appear smooth.
- exposure: Exposure refers to the lightness or darkness of an image. If an image is too dark, the photo is called underexposed. If it is too light, it is called overexposed. Exposure is controlled using the three tools mentioned above – ISO, aperture, and shutter speed – to balance and achieve the desired exposure.
- White balance: This refers to the color of light. While the human eye adapts to different light, cameras do not. This can result in photos taken at night having a yellow-orange cast. White balance helps to avoid this issue by telling the camera what temperature the light was at the time of shooting. Many people use the automatic setting for white balance, which is generally pretty good. I prefer to always shoot at 5,500 Kelvin (daylight) and adjust white balance in software as needed.
- Exposure compensation: This is your way of telling the camera how under- or over-expose your image. It’s useful in automatic shooting modes. It’s measured in “stops” of light (acting like an additional aperture), with positive numbers producing brighter images and negative numbers producing darker images.
- Living: This is the general term for an image file type that is just raw data. To view RAW images you will need RAW processing software such as Adobe Lightroom, Capture One or Darktable, but RAW files can be edited much more extensively than JPEGs. We highly recommend shooting in RAW, as it gives you much more control over editing your photos.
- aspect ratio: This is the width to height ratio. Usually it’s 3:2, but it could be 4:3 or 16:9. Some cameras let you choose between these or even more. Keep in mind that if you want to print at a specific size you may need to crop depending on the aspect ratio. I usually shoot at 3:2, which means if I’m printing at 8 x 10 I’ll need to enlarge it to 8 x 12 and then crop a bit.
- Focal length: This is the length of the lens (technically, it’s the distance in millimeters between the lens and the film or sensor). It determines the field of view and the amount of zoom, which affects how much distortion there is in the image.
- Depth of Field: DoF is the percentage of an image that is in focus. You can position your focal point anywhere, but no matter where you put it, a certain portion of the image in front of and behind that point will be in focus. This is depth of field. A better term would be “depth of focus”, but it’s called field. Depth of field is affected by the interplay of aperture, focal length of the lens, and the position of the subject in the scene.
- Bokeh: “Bokeh” is a word that describes an extreme overuse of depth of field. Just kidding. It’s the Japanese word for the blurriness of the out-of-focus parts of an image. You might hear photographers say that an image has “smooth bokeh.” Nod and slowly back away. Just kidding. This means that the blurry parts of the image are smooth and beautiful, without any harsh circles or fuzzy feel. Got it? Well, let’s run with it.
Autofocus camera and interchangeable lenses
Photo: Scott Gilbertson
If you want to step up from a camera phone, I recommend skipping the compact camera and going for an interchangeable lens camera. The reason is that most compact cameras are only moderately better than a phone. Some aren’t as good as a phone. Many have zoom lenses, which is a step up, but not a big one, especially considering the price.
