Friday, July 26, 2013

My Camera Buying Strategy

I tend to over-research purchases like this; here's my strategy:

The last couple times I was in the market for a new camera I spent 8 or 10 bucks for one of those "Digital camera buyer's guide" you see on magazine racks.  This gives a good table of hundreds of models and features, what the latest models have, etc.  Then I check online for prices and reviews.  Dpreview.com has really in-depth previews (20+ pages) for the cameras they do review; adorama.com and bhphoto.com have good reviews from camera-heads, amazon and newegg are good for more consumer-type reviews.  For pricing, I'd probably check them all.

[Your Camera Doesn't
Matter](http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/notcamera.htm) is a great
article to make you think twice about spending (more) money.  The best
camera is the one you have with you; and
[sensor size](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_sensor_format) and
optices are more important than megapixels.

DSLR's do seem to keep their value pretty well, so could be seen as an
investment.  Used ones are good too and you might not worry about
carrying it around as much as a brand new expensive one.  If you like
to hack and want to really expand your camera's abilities, look at
CHDK (Canon point-and-shoot; search flicker) or Magic Lantern (Canon
DSLRs) alternative firmwares.  These give additional capabilities like
motion detection (catch lightning strikes), time lapse, auto
bracketing, etc. that would otherwise add hundreds to the cost.

posted in
http://www.reddit.com/r/pittsburgh/comments/1hk0yu/camera_stores_in_pittsburgh/

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