Hi everyone!
Today I went on a walk in a park and had a lot of fun trying to find interesting angles and subjects to snap a pic with my phone. I really loved walking around "with the eye of a photographer" and wanted to hear your recommendations on what would be a good first buy geared towards my interests. While the pictures were satisfactory from my OnePlus 12, I am aware that they would never rival the quality of bigger sensors/lenses.
I owned one DSLR back in the days but never got the interest of playing in the manual and semi-manual modes.
My ideal camera would be one relatively simple to operate but offering good specs that would make computer touch-ups (cropping, colours, balance, etc) as I think that my interest will be on detecting good capture opportunities more than finding optimal camera settings.
My guess is an entry level DSLR/mirrorless would be interesting to explore different lenses?
The products will probably be computer wallpapers (4k HDR screens) and I would love to prioritize the crispiness/resolution.
As I don't plan to do more than play with it from time to time, I am looking in the sub 1.5k $ area (new or used)
TL;DR: Looking for a worthwhile step-up from a cellphone to capture crisp wallpapers of nature/sceneries. +-1500$ new/used.
If you want to mess with different lenses, then yes. a DLSR or mirrorless camera will be the way to go. If you stick with it you will ultimately wind up spending more on lenses than the camera body itself. Don't sweat this too much; it's inevitable, and if you're careful you can keep your lens collection when you move to your next camera. An interchangeable lens camera of some sort will also allow you to engage in that most quintessential of hipster activities, fucking around with pinholes and tilt-shift bendy jigs and mount adapters and vintage glass, and all the other things that are emphatically not current model OEM lenses explicitly designed to work with your camera.
The only other option is to go with an point-and-shoot camera with an integrated lens. Since last time I looked (my last point-and-shoot was a Canon SX130 IS which I still have, and is so old it runs off of two AA cells), these have mutated significantly now that people's smartphone cameras have unequivocally dominated the market niches that used to be occupied by entry level happy snap cams, wind-up disposables, and so forth. Basically all of the point-and-shoots left standing are either novelty instant photo printer cameras or prosumer models offering significant zoom ranges if any of that is your jam, both of these being things that cell phone cameras still can't do.
But this also means they're not exactly cheap.
If you're dedicated to humping a big camera around anyway, a smallish mirrorless body is probably the way to go. Don't feel bad about whipping out your phone camera anyway, for certain subjects. I still do it all the time, even when I have my big camera dangling around my neck — usually because I have some manner of goddamned photohowitzer attached to it and I need to take a picture of something that's not half a mile away or I need a wide angle field of view for something. As Call of Duty taught us all, switching to your sidearm is faster than ~~reloading.~~ Er, swapping lenses.
Hahaha, made me actually laugh lout loud, or at least snort loudly