[teestub]

Very happy with my Om-D EM-5 I got second hand following asking a similar question. Good selection of lenses available across Olympus and the Panasonic with the same fit. I mainly use a 25mm which would be the same as a 50mm on a ‘normal’ camera.

[Fultonius]

One dropped my olympus em5 a few times, once straight on to the brand new 12-100 lens I bought for Chile...

Seems fairly weather sealed, and tough. That said, it's in for a pcb replacement for £160 which is a bit annoying as it's only 6 years old. Maybe dropped it one too many times... 

Sony have a new small interchangeable lens camera that's meant to be great. A7c. Probably outwith the budget though.

[cheque]

Sony have a new small interchangeable lens camera that's meant to be great. A7c. Probably outwith the budget though.

Yeah, £1900 body-only is quite a lot to spend on a camera for a careless 13-year-old.

Hard to make specific recommendations without a budget but echo the M43 recommendations.

[jwi]

All I want from a camera is a viewfinder, an aperture-priority mode, a decent wide angle, a sharp short tele and decent low-light capabilities. I haven't looked at cameras the last five-six years, but I don't imagine that the lenses has gotten much better, but the sensors must be a lot better than six years ago?

Two lenses with focus lengths equivalent to 35 mm and 105mm on a small-format camera and with apertures around f/2.5 on a body with a sensor that can be pushed to 1600 ISO would be enough for 90% of all snaps I take.

Sorry, very abstract answer.

[nic mullin]

Very similar question - 13 year old has been asking for a "proper" camera for ages but I'm a complete ignoramus when it comes to these things. We're hoping to leverage the grandparents into buying and they're in the US, so not sure what to say about budget. She is, to put it politely, not the most careful child so robustness would be quite important.

What does she want to use it for?

As JB says, pretty much all “proper” cameras are delicate to some extent, but it’s surprising how robust they can be. There are some “tough” compact cameras around, but I think they’re mostly crap.

My current requirements are similar to what jwi describes, plus a long lens for wildlife, but it took me quite a while to work out what I enjoyed taking pictures of and what worked for me, which was (and still is) part of the fun. If you think this could be a long term interest, it’ll be worth starting with that in mind, which probably means an SLR or mirrorless camera from Sony, Canon or Nikon. Which camera and lens to start with will depend on budget and what she wants to do with it.

[lagerstarfish]

The other factors that stand out for me in my experience of 13 year olds...

How and when do they expect to share/publish/print the pictures?

How much effort do they want to put into processing their images?

Are they technically minded/motivated?

Are they artistically minded/experienced/skilled/trained?

The big thing - what do they want that they can't get from their phone camera?

Oh, yeah, do they want to be making video as well?

[lagerstarfish]

I let a teenager loose with a canon sx220 hs.

These cameras don't cost a lot second hand.

Ok wide angle and zoom. Ok automatic functions.

They can be modified with CDHK which gives a whole lot of control for not much money.

The teenager discovered that they wanted to be able to quickly share pictures to social media (not easy from the camera, but others are easier).

The teenager discovered that they liked seeing their good pictures on a big screen and this is different to sharing on social media.

The teenager discovered aperture control.

This led me to hand over the DSLR

When I let the teenager use a DSLR, they chose not to take it out and reverted to phones camera use

[lagerstarfish]

Anyway Andy,
good luck.

[Anti]

I let a teenager loose with a canon sx220 hs.

These cameras don't cost a lot second hand.

Ok wide angle and zoom. Ok automatic functions.

They can be modified with CDHK which gives a whole lot of control for not much money.

The teenager discovered that they wanted to be able to quickly share pictures to social media (not easy from the camera, but others are easier).

The teenager discovered that they liked seeing their good pictures on a big screen and this is different to sharing on social media.

The teenager discovered aperture control.

This led me to hand over the DSLR

When I let the teenager use a DSLR, they chose not to take it out and reverted to phones camera use

Haha this is such a good series of events and encapsulates some of the problems facing dslr. I have a Sony mirrorless that is compact and fun to use but cheap and robust. Good for filming myself falling off shit boulders, taking for walks with toddler for snaps etc.

[tomtom]

Andy - I’ve a 8-10 Year old DSLR that I’ve not used for at least two years. It won’t have a super pixel sensor - but it does have a large sensor so takes good pics and has full manual control etc... she’s welcome to borrow that on a semi permanent basis and see what happens (eg is she hooked and wants her own etc.. or uses if for a couple of weeks then forgets about it...). 

[Johnny Brown]

All I want from a camera is a viewfinder, an aperture-priority mode, a decent wide angle, a sharp short tele and decent low-light capabilities. I haven't looked at cameras the last five-six years, but I don't imagine that the lenses has gotten much better, but the sensors must be a lot better than six years ago?

Two lenses with focus lengths equivalent to 35 mm and 105mm on a small-format camera and with apertures around f/2.5 on a body with a sensor that can be pushed to 1600 ISO would be enough for 90% of all snaps I take.

Sorry, very abstract answer.

Completely agree with this (although I'd want 28mm and 65mm). A Sony A7 is the answer for most people I think, the sensor might not be cutting edge but is more than good enough (i.e. wonderful), and you can adapt pretty much any SLR lens ever made with a cheap adapter, and upgrade to fancy lenses over time. Plus more than competent video, and it's not much bigger than an OM-1.

(Actually lenses do keep getting better, but its only relevant on the most modern sensors which have little practical use for most except to fill your hard drive with oversampled microblur).

The teenager discovered that they wanted to be able to quickly share pictures to social media (not easy from the camera, but others are easier).

This. The camera companies have been absolutely asleep at the wheel on this, I haven't seen a camera yet where it is well implemented. My wife periodically wants to borrow a 'proper camera' only to start an argument when she can't get it off the thing. Now that Instagram is the prime image-sharing platform things are even worse - it only accepts uploads from a phone. So even if you shoot RAW and use Lightroom etc you're still left having to get the jpeg back to your phone where Insta tells you 'could not load photo'. Fuck em.

[teestub]

...So even if you shoot RAW and use Lightroom etc you're still left having to get the jpeg back to your phone where Insta tells you 'could not load photo'. Fuck em.

Ah so that’s why you haven’t posted anything 😄

[Johnny Brown]

Pretty much! I've been hoping to avoid it but as it seems to be where the social media CoG is nowadays I might have to.

[tomtom]

#nofilter there JB

[andy popp]

Thanks everyone, I've learnt a lot - mainly that a DSLR is probably not what we need. Seriously, the answers have really helped me clarify things (I did warn you that I am completely clueless about all this).

[lagerstarfish]

The big thing that you get from a camera that you cannot get from a phone is optical zoom, but I'm sure this will be changing at some point

[tomtom]

The big thing that you get from a camera that you cannot get from a phone is optical zoom, but I'm sure this will be changing at some point

And depth of field effects (that come from manual aperture control)...

[lagerstarfish]

The big thing that you get from a camera that you cannot get from a phone is optical zoom, but I'm sure this will be changing at some point

And depth of field effects (that come from manual aperture control)...

I guess depth of field effects will increasingly come from "filters" within phone apps

[jwi]

is there any phone camera that has a convincing depth of field simulation? The examples I have seen have been nauseating...

My feeling is that current phones take about as good raws as ten year old mid-prize compacts, but that they have quite good software to automatically touch up the photos. I have stopped carrying compacts on long routes, but my brand new phone is still slightly worse than my old cheapo compact (that stopped working).


I agree with Johnny B and larger. Whenever I plug in my ridiculously expensive (8 yo) camera in my computer with a cable(!) I feel like I belong to some form of bisarre Amish sect that is not allowed to use modern tech like bluetooth from the mid-late 90s or wifi from the late 80s.

[Johnny Brown]

And depth of field effects (that come from manual aperture control)...

You can manually control the aperture of most phones although you typically need a third party app. What that doesn't give you is any dof effects because the sensors and focal lengths used are too small. This is one reason pros use medium format, the combination of shallow dof with a broad fov is very hard to emulate, although my A7 + 65mm f/2 gets quite close to my old Mamiya 645 & 80mm f/1.9.

[galpinos]

This. The camera companies have been absolutely asleep at the wheel on this, I haven't seen a camera yet where it is well implemented. My wife periodically wants to borrow a 'proper camera' only to start an argument when she can't get it off the thing. Now that Instagram is the prime image-sharing platform things are even worse - it only accepts uploads from a phone. So even if you shoot RAW and use Lightroom etc you're still left having to get the jpeg back to your phone where Insta tells you 'could not load photo'. Fuck em.

I shoot in "RAW and JPEG" mode on my X-T1 then wirelessly transfer the jpegs to my phone. They can then be added to social media. The app is a bit clunky but it still only takes a couple of mins. I'd assumed other manufacturers had better apps?

Even just the jpegs pulled across are better than my iPhone 11 photos imho, especially, as noted above, if I have used a shallow depth of field. The main advantage of my phone is that it's always there.

[Johnny Brown]

Yeah I think that's the case with any camera <5 years old, but none I've seen are user friendly to the extent that the average teenage instagrammer looking to upgrade is likely to embrace them.