9 Years of Fails
I tried to get into photography a half dozen times between 2012 and 2021. Every time I tried to get started using my phone, got bored and frustrated, and quit.
In 2021 I bought a 2006 DSLR with a kit lens at a yard sale and instantly started taking better photos. I've modestly upgraded bodies and added to my lens collection since, and feel good enough to "officially" shoot events now.
It never would have happened if I kept following the advice I'd heard dozens of times from art teachers, photographers, and all around the internet: "just use your phone" to learn photography before investing in a camera.
What were y'all smoking?
You Get Better at Photography by Taking More Pictures. Duh.
I took a photo class in high school that followed a progression like this:
First learn "composition" (you stare at like 10 famous photos in class then try to make a picture like that). Then learn framing, followed by working with lighting. After spending 2/3 of the semester on that, switch the camera out of "auto" and take some corny experimental shots with long shutter speeds, and finally try out adjusting the aperture.
If you google "how to learn photography" you'll get hundreds of variations on this progression.
It's the most painful, least rewarding way to learn photography.
Here's what I did when I got a dedicated camera:
First, I put it in aperture priority and take tons of goofy portrait photos with my pets and family. Sometimes I'd take the same picture rolling the aperture 1/3 a stop each time to see which one I liked best. Then I started paying more attention to light, and then learned to shoot in shutter priority to freeze motion more.
I figured out composition and framing over time after accepting, rejecting, cropping, and adjusting images. Hard to do with phone pictures which usually don't make it to a bigger screen!
Design Matters, Actually
Holding a phone to take pictures feels bad. The thing was not made to hold up in front of your face. Duh! If you try to hold a phone in a stable pose akin to a dedicated camera, you're covering up the lenses.
Dedicated cameras are about the same shape now as they were in the 90s. They're a good size and shape to hold up to your face for a long amount of time. Viewfinders are good!
The software design is the bigger thing: default phone camera apps are the ultimate point-and-shoot. You can snap a picture of almost anything and get a result that looks decent and accurate. Behind the scenes, any modern phone camera is taking multiple photos following the shutter, running some amazing processing on it, and spitting out an image that you'd almost never get out of a dedicated camera.
But the camera system was designed to work this way, and if you try to take more control, problems show up.
"Starter Camera" is a Meaningless Term
"Use your phone as a starter camera" as advice in 2023 makes no goddamned sense.
Let's say I own an electric bicycle (I do). One day I get interested in motorcycles, and ask a friend what one I should buy to learn to ride. They tell me I should ride my electric bike as a "starter" motorcycle until I've mastered the basics.
Huh?
So a phone is everyone's starter camera, or else it's not close enough to a dedicated camera to count. Either way, if you're asking for camera recommendations in 2023, it's because you want photos that look different than what your phone puts out.
The Best Camera is Not a Marketing Quip
"The best camera is the one you have with you"
Nah.
Chase Jarvis either made up or popularized that quote to sell his book of photos taken on an original iPhone. It's marketing. The dude shot professionally for over a decade, timed the market for when phone photography was an emerging novelty, and got the bag.
A Late 00s DSLR is the Best Camera for Most Beginners
There's one type of camera that's the best for most people getting into photography, and it's a used, late 2000s, entry-level APS-C DSLR.
With that out of the way, here's why late 2000s DSLRs are the best camera for most people learning photography:
- They are cheap. $60 is "good enough", $110 is "very good", and $200 is "not actually that far behind a new mirrorless body."
- >=10MP is good enough for anything on a screen.
- The ergonomics beat most entry-level mirrorless cameras.
- SD cards are still a standard.
We're just dumb little humans that don't make sense. Spending a moderate sum of money on a new hobby is more fun than trying to use the tools you already have but with really hard thinking.
Hard thinking = no fun.
Big camera = lots of fun!