The Megapixel war

Major marketing weapon still used by DSLR manufacturers is the number of mega pixels in the camera. But do we have to really worry about this? Are you planning to enlarge your photo to large format poster or a sky scrape banner?? If not then don’t worry about the mega pixel of the camera. The least DSLR in today’s market has more than 10 MP. It’s pretty enough for enlarge into a 12 X 15 without distortion. Having large megapixels is sometimes become a headache. You’ll need more memory to store the pictures, super fast computers to process and take long time to transfer. So be careful when you buy. 15-18 MP is more than enough for you even your picture is nominated to display in an art gallery.

Why we should worry about brand?

There’s a never ending war in DSLR world between several companies. Nikon and Canon are the frontiers in the market but now Sony is also catching the market with the improved alpha-α range DSLRs. It’s quite important to get in touch with new releases form them for some period because then you can get an idea about the current market trend and what is best for you. I’m not force you to go for one of these brands but they have improved a lot than their competitors and products are reliable and easy to use. Most importantly there are lot of help forums available for these camera brands so it’s easy to search for an answer to your problems.

Price

Price is the main decisive factor when buying a DSLR. Basically there are three types of DSLRs in the market, Amateur DSLR, Mid-Range DSLR and Professional DSLR. You can identify the type of the camera by its product name and the price also tells what type of a camera it is.

Buying a DSLR is pretty different than buying a mobile phone or a laptop. Usually most expensive phone or laptop has the best configurations and super cool features. But story is different in DSLRs. In DSLR world most expensive cameras are the professional type ones. If you are very new to the field, don’t go behind most expensive cameras. Their operation is complex and you’ll need some knowledge before operating these alien machines.

If this is your first step in DSLR world, what suits you most is an amateur DSLR camera. You can buy an amateur type DSLR for comparatively lower price and you don’t need to have much knowledge in photography to operate this type of a camera.
Mid range DSLR are bit advanced than amateur type once but it’s suitable for a beginners as well. If you’d ask me what to buy, I’d say to buy a mid ranged DSLR because you can learn more and try out advanced photography techniques with these ones. Basically a mid range DSLR will be there with you longer time in your photography life than an amateur camera.

I’m not going to say many things about buying a professional DSLR because I’m also not there yet. If you know the field and need a professional DSLR, you should know what to buy better than me!

What is a DSLR, Why it’s better than a compact camera?

SLR (Single Lens Reflex) is a camera which typically uses a mirror and prism system that permits to view exactly the same what will be captured at the end. Photo capturing mechanism is almost the same in old days film SLRs and in modern DSLRs. But DSLR is equipped with a sensor and digital storage device instead of film to store the photograph. Most distinguished difference between a DSLR and a compact camera is the lens. In a compact camera, you can’t change the lens as you want. If your manufacturer says its 24mm-500mm, that’s it! You cannot go beyond that.

But in DSLR you are free to choose the lens as you want. In SLR world, lens should fit for the purpose. If you are taking portrait photographs, 50mm standard lens would fit it mostly. If you are into wildlife photography, you would need a telephoto lens for the job. Normally most of the amateur and mid-ranged DSLRs packed with a standard lens. But most of the vendors would give a chance to change the lens if you want or sell the camera with an additional lens. Therefore you should be extra careful when choosing the DSLR since your lens might not be suitable for your expectations with the camera.

Another main advantage with DSLR is the ability of changing the settings as you want. In all DSLR cameras it should possible to change the shutter speed, aperture and the ISO sensitivity. If you are not familiar with these words, just forget them. At least most of DSLRs have many different pre defined picture modes and processing techniques which you can use to snap a good picture.

Why you would need a DSLR instead of compact camera?

You might decide to go for a DSLR due to various reasons. Maybe your friend or colleague has DSLR and you saw some great pictures taken by them in Facebook or Flickr? Perhaps you might fed up with your pocket size compact camera and aiming for a big one in size??

Whatever the reason is, I recommend you to do a pre study before buying a DSLR just to check whether you really need one. Otherwise you can go for a SLR-like (bridge) cameras which has most of the capabilities of DSLR and most importantly very easy to use than a DSLR.

If you still reading this article, that means you are really interested in buying a DSLR rite? Then we’ll go for it. Actually buying a DSLR is one of the ‘best’ things happened in my life. I was in the photography field for many years with film cameras and it took very long time for me to switch to digital world. It took me very long time to search for a good DSLR and compare the features between each of them. Do you know what I ended up at last? After going through more than 10 different models, I choose Nikon D90 which was not so popular after three years of its release. I think I made the correct choice since none of the cameras I have used ever since weren’t able to satisfy me than my beauty. That’s my story with DSLR and now we’ll get into the business.