The Fundamentals of Buying a Camera, with Camera Store TV Chris Niccolls

Choosing a camera is not only hard because there are a ton of options out there, there’s also a ton of GREAT options. All the big camera manufacturers are making great products but they still have specific strengths and weaknesses depending on what your photographic needs are. 

To dive into this in extreme detail I sat down with Chris Niccolls from The Camera Store (http://www.thecamerastore.com) in Calgary, or as you probably know him, host of The Camera Store TV (https://www.youtube.com/thecamerastoretv). I’m pretty familiar with the cameras I own, but TCSTV put every camera through serious real world tests, so I always look to their opinion before I buy a new camera. Entry Budget If you’re moving up from a phone to camera for the first time you probably don’t want to spend too much until you figure out if this hobby is going to last or not. A few years back it was easy to spot the lower image quality from a cheaper camera, but thats no longer the case. A few hundred bucks can buy most of the image quality you would find in the gear pros use. As you spend more the difference of image quality starts to be smaller, and lot of what you’re paying for is improved usability, for example autofocus and ergonomics. 

But if you buy the Nikon D3400, Canon T6i or Sony A6000 you can take photos that no one will know aren’t coming out of a $10,000 system. 
Compact Cameras Smart phones have sucked all the air out of the room for smaller format cameras, but they still have their place. If a big camera feels like too much of burden, you can still get a slight quality boost over your phone with little pocket size cameras like the Panasonic ZS100, Canon G5X or Sony RX100 IV. Because of their small sensor size, they can more easily offer a bigger zoom range that’s harder to achieve with larger sensor cameras, great video quality, image stabilization and raw support. Micro Four Thirds This in-between sensor size has really come in to it’s own lately, with minimal trade offs in quality and huge advantages in cost and camera siz