Beginner’s Photography Question: Why get a DSLR? – Part 1

“Why get a DSLR?” is a question beginners often asks, especially those that have been told by other photographers to get DSLRs. My most common answer is, “You don’t, unless you really need to.” and “Google it.” And if you do search for it, you’ll find tons of useful articles and information products.

Since I’m writing beginners’ photography tips and techniques and how to cut down on spending in this hobby, i’m going to give you some points to consider before buying a Digital Single-Lens Reflex camera or DSLR.

But before anything else, if you’re just starting out in photography I suggest you learn the basic skills like composition and lighting FIRST before investing on gear.

Having all the gear in the world wouldn’t make you a good photographer if you don’t even know the basics of these two skills. Any decent point and shoot camera with manual settings control can be a good learning tool for composition and lighting. You don’t have to shell out hundreds of dollars or even thousands just to learn what the difference of adjusting aperture, shutter speed and ISO would do to your photos.

If you’ve learned the basics already and:

• you think your point and shoot camera is limiting you now;
• your cellphone camera is not good enough for taking photos other than your self portraits;
• you now have the budget to buy a DSLR;
• or you think getting a DSLR will take your photography skills to the next level;
• or for whatever reason you have, you now need to have some points to say when people ask you, “Why buy a DSLR?”.

Here are some reasons that would justify a DSLR purchase and what I think about these reasons.

Image quality
If you compare an image taken by a point and shoot camera and a photo taken by a DSLR, given that all settings are equal and resolution is the same, the DSLR photo would generally be better. Again I said generally, not always, but generally. It used to be always better, but with the advent of newer Point and Shoot cameras like the Panasonic LX3 and other similar enthusiast cameras the difference just got smaller in terms of sharpness, clarity and color.
One rebuttal to this justification is that once you print both pictures (from point and shoot and DSLR) the difference would be hardly noticeable on an 4×6 or even an 8×10 print.
Now, some people would counter this rebuttal by saying that with digital photography, most photos are now just seen on computer screens from online photo sharing sites. On a computer monitor, the full difference of the two would be noticeable. Let’s just assume that it does, but do you really view a photo at 3.2 Megapixel resolution on the web? A 17” monitor wouldn’t even be enough to display the whole photo, in full resolution. That’s why we have the term web size or around 640×480 pixels. So whatever resolution your image was, you’d be shrinking it (downsizing is the techie term for it) to 640 pixels on the long side. So if you have an 8MP photo (3504×2336 pixels) you’ll resize it to 640×427 pixels. There goes all that resolution, image sharpness, clarity and color.

Lens Interchangeability
Ok this one is, for me, one of the selling points of DSLRs. You’re not stuck to your cameras’ lens, and you can change it for whatever purpose or situation.
But if you’re going for range vs cost, you can get a 15x superzoom digital point and shoot camera for the price of a telephoto lens of a lesser range. That’s getting a zoom range of 28-432mm for a price of a 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens. So if you just want the range and just the average image quality, just get a super zoom digital camera like the Sony H-series or the Canon S-series. Also take note that with DSLRs, the lenses will be more expensive than your camera bodies, because you need to spend a lot for quality lenses.

Still interested to know the rest of possible justifications? Then read on to Part 2…

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