How much to spend on a camera: what the money actually buys

A camera system is a body, which is a computer with a sensor bolted to the front, and lenses, which are ground glass in a metal tube. They age at completely different rates. The body sits on the same curve as a laptop: a faster processor, a better autofocus model and a higher video bitrate arrive every few years and push the old one down the price lists. A lens made a decade ago resolves exactly as much detail today as it did when it was new, because nothing inside it has changed.

So the two halves of the bill behave differently the moment you leave the shop. The body is a depreciating asset you will replace. The lens is a tool you keep, carry across two or three bodies, and eventually sell for a sum that does not embarrass you. That asymmetry is the whole argument for buying lenses before bodies , and it is worth understanding before you settle on a number rather than after.

The 61 bodies in this catalogue run from €450 to €8,500, with a median of €1,800. The cheapest of each sensor size marks where the bands start: €450 for a rugged compact, €600 for APS-C, €700 for Micro Four Thirds, €1,500 for full frame and €5,500 for medium format. These are indicative EU street prices, and they move.

The shape of that table matters more than any single row. Between €600 and €1,800 the camera gains capability: focus that tracks, a viewfinder that works outdoors, sealing that survives a shower, files that hold up when you lift the shadows. Above roughly €2,500 it gains margin — more frames per second, more room at high ISO, more pixels to crop into. Margin is worth paying for only once you are demonstrably running out of it.

Sensor image quality stopped improving quickly some years ago. Resolution across these 61 bodies runs from 9 to 102 MP, and almost none of that span decides whether a picture looks good: a 24 MP file prints past A3 and still survives a hard crop. What has genuinely improved since the middle of the last decade is autofocus, sensor readout speed and video. If none of those three is the thing stopping you, the previous model is the same camera with a discount attached.

Be honest about what you give up. You lose the newest subject-detection classes, some readout speed, a year or two of firmware attention and a little resale value. You do not lose sharpness, colour or dynamic range in any quantity you will notice. If focus on moving subjects is what defeats you, that is the one case where the new body is the right purchase, and the autofocus and burst guide sets out how to tell.

• Check the shutter count if the body has a mechanical shutter and the seller can report it.
• Check the sensor with a photograph of a blank wall at f/16 — dust shows up, and so do marks on the cover glass.
• Check how many lenses the mount has gained in the last three years. A mount nobody is making glass for is a dead end whatever the body does.
• Check what is left of the warranty, and what a sensor clean or a shutter replacement costs at a service centre in your country.
• Leave the grip and the third battery until later. They are the easiest things to add and the first things people over-buy.

The number on the body is not the cost of taking photographs. A kit that works on the day is a body, two lenses, two cards, a spare battery and something to carry it in. Price that list before you commit to any part of it.

• The body. €450 to €8,500 here, median €1,800 — and the median is a fair guide to what an enthusiast body costs once it is sealed and has a good viewfinder.
• A first lens, usually the kit zoom bundled with the body. Competent, slow, and the reason a great many people conclude their new camera is a disappointment.
• A second lens, which is the one that changes the pictures. The cheap fast primes start at €220 for the Canon RF 50mm f/1.8, €250 for the Sony FE 50mm f/1.8 and €280 for the Nikon Z 40mm f/2, against a median of €950 across all 65 lenses here. The case for that purchase is in lenses before bodies .
• Two memory cards rather than one, so a card failure costs you half a shoot instead of all of it. Buy the speed the body needs for its burst and video modes, not the fastest card on the shelf.
• A spare battery. A mirrorless body runs a screen or an electronic viewfinder the whole time it is awake, and cold weather takes a further bite.
• A bag you will actually carry. The bag that fits everything is the bag that stays at home.

If you are setting a ceiling, set it for that whole list and work backwards to the body. The common and expensive failure is spending the entire number on the body and then shooting it for two years on the kit zoom, which is the one combination guaranteed to under-perform its price. If you would rather start from the pictures you want than from the hardware, how to choose a camera asks the questions in the other order.

This is where the money usually ends up being decided. The honest answer is that full frame earns its premium if one of three things is true, and not otherwise.

1. You shoot in low light often enough that one stop decides whether the picture exists. At the same framing and the same settings a full-frame sensor collects about 2.3 times the light of APS-C, which is about 1.25 stops, and four times that of Micro Four Thirds, which is two stops.
2. You want shallow depth of field at ordinary working distances. Frame the same shot from the same place and full frame gives about 1.2 stops less depth of field than APS-C, and exactly two stops less than Micro Four Thirds.
3. The lens you need exists only in a full-frame mount, or you already own full-frame glass.

Against all three: the cheapest full-frame body here is €1,500 against €600 for APS-C and €700 for Micro Four Thirds, and the difference does not stop at the body. A full-frame lens covering the same field of view at the same equivalent aperture is larger, heavier and dearer, and the heaviest items in this catalogue — bodies to 1,415 g, lenses to 2,115 g — are almost all full frame or medium format. If you carry a camera all day, that is not a rounding error.

1. 1

   Set the whole-system number first

   One figure, covering body, two lenses, two cards, a battery and a bag. Everything below is about dividing that number, not about finding more of it.

2. 2

   Choose the mount before the body

   You are committing to a lens catalogue for longer than you are committing to the camera. Among the lenses here, Sony E has 15, Canon RF 13, Nikon Z 11, Fujifilm X 10, Micro Four Thirds 9 and L-mount 7. Check that the two lenses you want exist there, at prices you would pay. Reading a lens name is how you check that quickly.

3. 3

   Take the body one generation back

   Unless autofocus on moving subjects is what stops you, buy the previous model and keep the difference. It takes the same photograph.

4. 4

   Spend the difference on one fast prime

   Not three lenses. One, at a focal length you already shoot, wide enough to work indoors. The cheapest here run €220 to €280, which is the largest change in picture quality per euro anywhere in this catalogue.

5. 5

   Shoot it for six months before buying anything else

   By then you will know what is genuinely missing, and the next purchase will be the right one rather than the interesting one. Start with the finder when you get there.