Cameras are expensive. New ones can cost anything from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars so how much should you spend? Let’s dig in.
Figure Out What Your Budget Is
Before looking to buy a camera, you should sit down and work out what your maximum possible budget is. Once you start looking, it’s very easy to let that number creep up, and soon you’re spending your emergency fund, college savings, or rent money on a shiny new Nikon.
There are great cameras available at pretty much every price point so before seriously starting your research, make sure you have a maximum ballpark amount you’re prepared to spend.
For this article, I’m going to use a few example budgets to suggest potential cameras:
- Less than $300
- Less than $1000
- Less than $3000
You can obviously use your own budget numbers, but these ranges are a pretty good starting point.
What Photo Gear Do You Already Have?
RELATED: How to Get Started with Photography
A lot of people, when they first get started with photography, overlook an important point: the camera is only one piece of gear. The lenses you have are at least as important as the camera—I’d argue they’re more important. You also need SD cards. Different kinds of photography need other gear, for example, for landscape photography you also need a tripod, and potentially some filters.
If you’re buying your second camera, then you probably already have some lenses and other gear. If this is your first camera, then you’ll also need to factor into your budget the cost of buying everything else. You can’t just buy a camera in isolation.
