The Best Camera Is The One That Is Always With You.

I am often asked by friends and family, "What camera should I buy?". It turns out that is a very difficult question to answer. My follow up question is always, what do you want from your camera?

- Do you want it small enough to fit in your pocket or do you want the best, regardless of size? Or, do you want something in between?

- What is going to be your typical subject? (Kids, Flowers, Buildings, all the above)

There are tons of other questions I usually ask someone, and they are always surprised that I do. The market is so saturated with great cameras, that most are built with strengths in specific areas. Most of the increasing price differences between a manufacture's line up is not always optics and speed, but simply feature sets.

Take for instance, the camera I shoot weddings with, the Nikon D300. The D300 and the D5000 (Nikon's newest entry level SLR) have the same sensor and processing engine. The main differences in the price range are the build quality (metal vs plastic) and feature sets easily accessible on the body (d300) or buried in menus (d5000). The D300 and D5000 perform the exact same under ideal conditions, but start to add low light and fast moving objects and the D300 will run circles around the D5000. The D300 also has a bunch of external jacks to plug accessories into it, which the D5000 does not. My point? If you are shooting family picnics, beach photos and your kid's soccer games then there is NO REASON to spend almost $900 more on the D300. Its completely contrary to American buying habits, which usually say that more expensive (particularly in a specific brand's line up) is better.

So what is my final answer? For those that are not shooting for money, I ultimately tell them that the best camera is the one you will ALWAYS have with you. In many cases, thats your camera phone. As those camera's get better and better, carrying a separate camera is becoming less and less necessary.

Check out the iPhone camera gallery at this link over at Chase Jarvis' site. Remarkable stuff considering the phone's camera was (not on the new one!) less than 1 megapixel.

- Chris