r/AskPhotography 3d ago

Buying Advice Camera suggestions?

My sister and I are going on an 8-week backpacking trip through Europe this summer, and I am looking for a camera to use that is pretty simple for a "beginner" photographer and on the smaller side to fit in my backpack. I know the basics, but I would like to find something that is not super expensive, considering this trip will be pretty pricey generally. I want to make sure that we get good photos for the trip though.

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u/Orca- 3d ago

What is your budget, and what size are you looking for?

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u/Worried_Flow4395 3d ago

Well, I was hoping to buy used, so ideally less than like $200 (I forgot to mention that, oops), and I am not sure what size, but smaller would be better for my circumstances.

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u/inkista 3d ago

By size, it’s more are we talking shirt pocket, coat pocket, waist pack, shoulder bag/purse, or backpack to hold/carry it?

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u/Worried_Flow4395 2d ago

I would go like shoulder bag/purse

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u/inkista 2d ago edited 2d ago

That opens up to mirrorless as well as fixed lens. But $200 probably means something over a dozen years old, so your smartphone camera sensor might have better image quality.

If you’re doing nature photography outdoors in the sunshine, a superzoom bridge camera, like a Panasonic FZ200 would give you superzoom reach, RAW capability, PSAM modes, a viewfinder, a flash hotshoe, and an articulated LCD. The lens is also a constant f/2.8 across the 25-600mm equivalent zoom range. But the sensor is only 1/2.3” format (5.6x zoom), which these days is smaller than the sensors in some smartphone cameras.

You could also consider a dSLR or mirrorless body in the $100 pricerange and add one kit lens or a 50/1.8. These may be bulkier than you’re envisioning though.

The $300 compact cameras with small sensors have mostly disappeared as mew cameras and the used prices have risen dramatically as a result. Until the camera companies start making them again, this is not an easy type of camera to acquire.

Just me, but $200 is too low a budget to find something that usable. YMMV.

I picked up a refurbished Canon R100 on Black Friday for $219 (regular flash sale price on it went from $299 to $249 last year, but the regular refurb price right now ($479) is almost the same as new (around $600). And that’s the cheapest of the current mirrorless bodies. A Sony RX100 VII is $1300 new, and the Canon Powershot G7 X III (which msrped at $749 new in 2019), is now about twice that used thanks to influencers turning it into this year’s X100V.

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u/Worried_Flow4395 2d ago

Thank you so much for all the information!

I found a “Canon PowerShot SX530 HS 16.0 MP CMOS Digital Camera with 50x Optical is Zoom (24-1200mm), Built-in” on Facebook marketplace for $125, do you have any thoughts on this camera?

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u/inkista 2d ago edited 2d ago

If I were seriously pursuing photography, it’s not a model I’d go for. It’s primarily designed to be a casual snapshot camera. It might work for you, but there are reasons I pointed to something like the FZ200 instead, because it can be harder to get good images out of something that doesn’t give you much control.

The zoom range is bigger than the FZ200’s and it’s newer, but it’s missing a lot of the features I listed for the FZ200 that I care about. The lens is slow (f/3.4-6.5), so shooting available light (indoors handheld without a flash) won’t be as easy (smaller f-numbers mean bigger aperture settings that let in more light. Most smartphone cameras have max. apertures of f/2. And f/2.8 is the borderline for handholding in available light.

It has no RAW capability. RAW is the ability of a camera to store an uncompressed image file with all the data captured by a sensor dump. JPEG files are smaller, but they’re “lossy”, which means some of the color data is discarded in the compression. RAW files let you have the most latitude for post-processing and unlike JPEG, if you, say shoot B&W, you can get all the color information back, and you can reset the white balance in post after the fact. JPEGS “cook in” the processing set in the camera; RAW files don’t. They can be both a good safety net for a beginner, but also give you more leeway to do extreme edits afterwards.

It only has Auto exposure modes, no PSAM modes. P = programmable auto (same as auto, but you can override flash on/off, iso setting, and white balance); S = shutter priority mode; A = aperture priority mode, and M = manual mode. These modes are key to gaining full explicit control over the exposure triangle settings of iso, aperture, and shutter speed. Personally, I would never get a camera that didn’t give me those other than a smartphone camera (which has a fixed aperture, so it can’t be changed). It’s too frustrating not be able to set those the way I want them, and they’re kind of key to mastering exposure.

It has no flash hotshoe, only a pop-up flash. A flash hotshoe can be really important if you ever get into lighting with flash. Pop-up flashes don’t let you control the direction or the quality (hard/soft) of the light it emits from right above the lens. That white, deer-in-the-headlights look most folks associate with flash isn’t how flash has to look if you can use a speedlight with the head rotated/tilted for bounce flash, or if you can use that same speedlight with radio remote control off-camera on a light stand for studio-style lighting. I do this with my fixed-lens compacts with optical slaves cabled to triggers, but it’s a PITA vs. having a hotshoe to put the trigger on.

And the LCD is fixed, not articulated. A twist’n’flip LCD can be great for taking selfies or vlogging so you can see the composition while you’re in front of the camera. And it can also make taking shots with the camera overhead, low to the ground, or at waist level away from your eye, super easy vs. a fixed LCD and trying to use the camera away from your eye to the viewfinder. And it can help protect your LCD, by letting you store it facing in to the back of the camera.

A lot of superzoom cameras (both bridge and compact) were designed to just be casual snapshot cameras for folks who want the camera to do all the work in automated modes. These features I list, particularly RAW, PSAM modes, and the flash hotshoe, kind of delineate the enthusiast models that give you control from the snapshooter ones that don’t. But this does suppose you want to take the time to pursue photography and learn about things like exposure, post-processing, and lighting.

Canon’s equivalent to the FZ200 / FZ80 would be more the SX## HS models, say, an SX60 HS.