How to Choose the Best Camera for Your Photography Needs.

TLDR: It's the one in your hand. Sort of.

The Fujifilm X-T5: a power house of fun photography.

There’s a common saying: the best camera you have is the one in your hand. It’s thrown around, like confetti at a wedding, as a way of alleviating the feeling that you need the best kit, the most expensive lenses, the best image quality etc. For a creative endeavour that is heavily linked to the tools you use, it’s a useful phrase that I largely agree with.

But it’s a bit too simplistic. Yes, you can create excellent images with (almost) any camera if you know how to use it, understand how light works, composition, timing and all the other elements that make great photographs. But, you have to want to use the camera as well. Just like music or painting, if you don't enjoy the creative process then you won't produce great work.

"My logic was that if I had a professional camera, I would be a professional photographer and take professional images" 

The first camera I remember using was a disposable Kodak 24 exposure film camera, given to me when I was seven for my first overseas holiday to Paris. I took pictures of random objects, the River Seine, the Eiffel Tower and street scenes, blowing through the film within the first 6 hours. But I distinctly remember the thrill of framing up through the tiny viewfinder, the click of the shutter button, and then the grinding sensation of winding on to the next frame. It was exciting and felt important.

Years later, when I began studying photography, I 'borrowed' a Nikon 401x, the ‘90s SLR my father had used. On finishing school, I was given a Nikon D80 to help me move into digital photography and start pursuing what I now wanted to do as a career. I liked my D80, but I always wanted something more, a ‘pro’ model. My logic was that if I had a professional camera, I would be a professional photographer and take professional images. If only it were that simple!

I started working in a camera shop and would spend hours with almost every DSLR body, lenses of all focal ranges, flashguns, lighting, filters, even the compact cameras we used to sell (it was the mid 2000s and the industry hadn’t been obliterated by camera phones or the internet yet).

I loved testing and learning the new features, the ever-developing ISO, auto focus and burst performance, and seeing the leaps in sensor quality. We would geek out on the information and statistics, and - humble brag - I was the top salesperson in 2008 across the whole company because of my absorbed knowledge of the many options available for consumers. I just lived for cameras and knew everything about them. I still look back fondly on those few years, and there’s not many people who can say that about working in retail!

"You have to want to use your camera"

But all this exposure (pun intended) to the best cameras money can buy did create a snobbishness that has taken a long time to shake off. I was used to handling the very best of the time - the Nikon D3, the industry-changing Canon 5D Mii, Hasselblads, Leicas etc - so I knew what was possible, what was out there, what constituted a 'good' camera. I had seen what these top-of-the-line models could achieve and I knew the more humble options couldn’t compete on paper. The fact they were more than enough for me wasn’t the point. I had to have the best. But I couldn’t actually afford one - I worked in retail, after all. 

Fast forward a few more years, I was now working as an in-house photographer. By this time I was shooting with a Nikon D700 - an excellent DSLR I really loved - and a host of Nikkor lenses. The D700 produced amazing quality images, but I was always conscious it was a mini D3, and wasn’t the ‘pro’ camera I aspired to. It shared almost all the same internals, the same sensor, and I’d stuck a battery grip on to create the size of a D3 and achieve that 'pro' look. But it wasn't the top-end Nikon. At the time, there was still a belief that the bigger the camera, the more professional people thought you were, regardless of if the pictures were any good or not. I felt like I needed this to prove my worth.

Numerous frames, assignments and countries later, I upgraded to the D750 (with battery grip of course!) in 2014, and my personal work evolved to feature a lot more street photography. Even though the D750 is widely regarded as the last great DSLR Nikon ever made, with incredible image quality, I still felt it wasn't a true 'professional' camera and I’d become preoccupied with the perceived limitations of it on paper compared to the D4, rather than trying to capture my images in the best way possible.

As a result, a recent look through my personal archive from the last decade shows a really frustrating habit of underexposing photographs to keep the ISO noise levels lower for smoother grain, even though ISO noise by this point was effectively a non-issue below 6400. My inability to accept I had a great camera was essentially impacting the photos I was shooting. At least I only did this in my personal work! Ironically, I now sometimes add grain IN to my images for creative reasons.

With video production joining my skillset in the mid 2010s, new jobs and more budget responsibilities, I was now shooting with more and more cameras, from full frame DSLRs, cine cams and early mirrorless models, to GoPros and compacts. Essentially, I used whatever would work best for the job. As a side note, I remember the Nikon D90 first hitting the shelves of my camera shop and we couldn't believe they'd put video inside a DSLR. Followed a few months later by Sony entering the fray with its first Alpha DSLRs. How times change! Anyway, using a wider variety of cameras helped me to realise that a camera really is just a tool and that, used properly, any model will capture what you need and do a good job of it. In many ways having to work with the restraints of a particular camera often forced me to think creatively and problem solve.

But there are some considerations that still matter. Prior to my D750, I briefly had a Nikon D610. I hated it. The handling felt off, it didn’t sit right in my hands and overall it just felt like an inferior camera, despite the very decent specs on paper, so I sold it very quickly. Likewise, I've never really got along with Canon DSLRs, I just find something about the ergonomics a bit off. 

As we entered the Covid Pandemic, work almost ceased entirely and there was very little to do during lockdowns. I began to feel my trusty D750 wasn’t really working for me anymore either. It was bulky, noisy, the lenses were large and obvious. I loved the optical viewfinder but mirrorless technology offered huge leaps in what was possible, especially in size and portability. My obsession with having the biggest cameras and lenses possible had completely inverted: now it was all about small, light, compact and discreet, even though big cameras still impressed clients.

Emerging from the pandemic, having barely touched a camera for almost two years, a new job introduced me to the new Nikon Z series cameras. These really highlighted the huge changes in camera technology over the older D800s, D850s and D4s we'd been shooting with. It was clear there was a major shift happening in the industry, similar to the rise of digital over film.

Having seen what was now possible, I didn’t want to go out with my D750 anymore. I still used it, but it didn’t make we want to pick it up as much, despite my deep attachment to it and the sentimental value it has. I’d seen what the newer models could achieve and I’d been hooked.  

At the same time, my Nikon FM 35mm film camera was bringing me a lot of joy with its traditional operation, simplicity and small(ish) form factor. Mirrorless cameras could achieve this but with the benefits of digital tech inside. And a switch flipped in my head.

Ultimately, having used many excellent cameras over the last decade (shout out to the Lumix GH5s) that weren’t pitched at a professional level yet still did an excellent job, I realised that my D750 was an excellent camera but I wasn’t using it because I didn’t want to. I needed a camera that made me want to pick it up, want to go out and take photographs and enjoy the process of doing so. I needed a camera that brought back the joy of taking pictures. 

"Using a variety of cameras helped me to realise that a camera really is just a tool"

In the end, I settled the Fujifilm X-T5; a small mirrorless model which does exactly what I need. It’s designed to be simple, fun, and takes beautiful images. Sure, it’s not a full frame camera with all the bells and whistles, but those are just stats on paper now. When you look at an image, you can’t tell. It’s designed to be enjoyable. And it is. I love using it and it’s made me get back out there to take pictures for the fun of taking pictures, more than I have done for years. And this is what photography is all about.

I still use many other cameras for my work. A pair of Lumix S5II bodies paired with Sigma Contemporary prime lenses are my current workhorses, plus drones, and action cameras, and I really like using all of them. But I now see them as tools and nothing more. After all this time thinking I needed to have the very best camera possible, with huge lenses and all the accessories, I’ve finally realised that’s simply not true. The best camera you can have in your hand is the one that makes you want to use it. Nothing else matters.