What Top Five Requirements In A Camera System Are Most Important To You?

Detail from a 1939 Chevrolet; Leica Minilux (40mm f/2.4 lens) point-and-shoot camera; Kodachrome 64 film
(click to enlarge)

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The other day, while I was reading some photography related information, I started thinking about digital cameras, the idea that you really can't find a "bad" camera today and, if I were starting all over again building a camera system, what would be my top five criteria for purchase.  Just what would be the most important attributes of a camera system, for me, based on all of the knowledge and experience I have gained over the past four and a half decades of photographing and that would best meet the needs of the types of photography I practice?

The first thing I did was to think of, and list, the things that are important.  The second task was to rank them.  I tried to list only five, but was unable as there are more than five things about "a system," and I believe that is what you need to buy into, that are important to my kinds of photography.  Your mileage may vary.

The top five are ranked in order of importance.  After that, I just ranked additional important aspects that I feel are important or highly desirable.

1.  The camera has to be intuitive to hold and use and...well built.  I think this is the one attribute that is most important to me.  Surprised?  After thinking about this, I was as well.  Does the camera feel right in my hands? Does it fit?  Does it feel natural to me? Are the number, nature and feel of the controls adequate and placed where I naturally would find them?  Is this a camera that feels like an extension of, not only my hand, but of me? Can the camera hold up for years if cared for properly?  If I don't really "love" my camera, I probably won't use it for long.

2.  Focus.  Is the focus accurate and consistent?  Is the focus fast?  Accurate and consistent are more important to my types of photography than fast—most of the time.  I have had cameras that did not consistently focus accurately in the past and the experience was miserable.  I need to know, without having to think about it, that my camera can focus first, accurately and second, consistently.  Now throw in fast focus and I'm a happy photographer.

3. Lenses.  I would not buy into a camera system that did not have a wide variety of high quality lenses available for the camera.  They don't necessarily have to be made by the camera's manufacturer, but they have to have high resolution, have good micro-contrast, low distortion, free of major abberrations, and have a substantial build quality.  I want a lens not only to be excellent optically, but I want it to feel that way as well.

As far as variety, for my types of photography, I find I need lenses in the range of (35mm film camera equivalency) 15mm for very wide angle landscape work all the way to 500mm for the occasional wildlife and bird photography in which I periodically engage. Additionally, a high quality macro lens is essential.  Some of the lenses need to be fast.  I don't need faster than f/1.4, but fast prime lenses are essential to low light and shallow depth of field for me.

4. Dynamic range.  I can't think of a single camera manufactured today (by the major manufacturers) that has a bad sensor.  However, some sensors have better attributes than others.  Some have more pixels than others but all are good sensors.  Where they differ is their dynamic range  as well as the manufacturers' algorithms written to process the files. For example, my Nikon D810 has about 15 stops of dynamic range! To me, that is simply amazing, coming from a guy who shot 35mm Kodachrome for years and had to deal with black shadows or no highlights in many images.  You could take your pick.  Keep highlight detail or let your shadows go black.  The normal choice was to keep highlight detail.  

I don't like having to take multiple exposures, then merge them to retain both shadow and highlight detail.  With the D810, I have never found a situation where I have had to do that as the camera's sensor handled everything I encountered beautifully–and amazingly!  I think one only needs 15 stops of dynamic range on a rare occasion, but 13 stops is in line with everyday situations one may encounter.  So, my minimum for a camera system in which I was considering would be a 13-stop dynamic range.  Very doable in today's digital photographic world.  Less than that and I scratch it off my list.

5. Camera settings that are easy to find, quick and straightforward to change.  Nothing is more frustrating to me than to find myself out photographing and encounter a situation in which I need to quickly change my camera settings in order to successfully photograph it—then can't find the settings quickly or struggle to change them, only to miss the opportunity.  Good companies design camera systems with controls, settings and the ability to change them by thoroughly researching and talking to photographers to find out how they use their camera gear.  A photographer won't continue to use a camera system if he or she cannot quickly and successfully change settings in fast developing situations.

Those are my top five.  If you notice, I didn't really talk about sensors, with the exception of dynamic range.  I believe all of the currently manufactured sensors are excellent. Some have more pixels than others.  I have said repeatedly in the past that I believe, for my stock photography, 24mp is my sweet spot, but if I were only photographing for myself, 12-16mp is plenty for everything I do.  It is hard to find an interchangeable lens camera with less than 12mp today.

Some aspects of camera and lens performance are outside of the use of the gear itself. For example, final color rendition is probably more of a function of your editing software instead of the camera and camera manufacturer's doing—unless you are using the JPEG format.  If you are using the RAW format, the third party editing software companies are trying their best to reproduce what the manufacturers intended, but you still have infinite control within the software to change any color parameter you desire.  So, I didn't list color reproduction as one of my criteria. Same with saturation, contrast or detail from RAW files.

These are my top five requirements.  Below are others that are important as well and I will explain why they didn't make the top five.  These are not in any particular order of priority.

Fast start-up time.  I don't leave my camera on continuously so it falls into sleep mode. I turn it off when not actually photographing to save battery power.  But, when I need it to come to life, I need it now!  Fast start up time is something that is important—some of the time, not all of the time.

Minimal shutter lag.  If I am photographing something I normally have the camera to my eye, finger on the shutter button and the shutter depressed halfway to have the camera "pre-focused."  When you adopt that methodology, most cameras have minimal shutter lag.  However, where it is important is when encountering those situations where you have to act very quickly and "snap," so to speak, that shutter or miss the shot entirely. Another situation is when photographing moving objects which you need to capture at a precise moment, such as a race car, athlete at the peak of action, etc.  I don't do much of that but I do photograph wildlife and birds in flight occasionally so, for me, absolute minimal shutter lag is a necessity some of the time.

Accurate light meter.  I learned photography by learning the light.  I can just about guess what shutter speed and aperture is necessary by looking at the direction and intensity of the light present as well as checking my ISO. For landscapes, nature and other types of similar photography, the lightmeter plays second fiddle to my knowledge of light and, now more importantly, to the histogram—which I think as the ultimate lightmeter.  Where an accurate lightmeter comes in is, again, fast moving situations when one can't check the lightmeter, histogram and the light may be rapidly changing.  Most of my photography is of "checking the histogram" type, but an accurate lightmeter sure takes the worry out of other situations.

Additionally, I have been using mirrorless cameras for the most part over the past three years and I can see my histogram, as well as the overall exposure of my image, directly in the EVF BEFORE I press the shutter.  That is a wonderful feature and if you haven't tried it, you owe it to yourself to try it.

Good battery life.  I'm used to getting well over 1000 exposures from a battery charge in my digital SLR cameras.  I fully understand all the power that is used by mirrorless in powering the LCD, EVF and the continuous live function.  I normally get over 400 exposures from both my E-M1 and my X-T1 so the battery life is not "terrible," which is a subjective term for us.  It would be nice, and I suspect things will get better in the future with lower power electronics coupled with better battery technology, to get more shots per charge than we do today.  In the mean time, I do what I don't necessarily like to do, and that is carry two extra batteries in my pocket (or four extras in a small camera bag if I am carrying one) to ensure that the battery in the camera has sufficient power and doesn't become exhausted at exactly the wrong moment.  Additionally, I always have all my batteries fully charged before I leave home with my camera.  However, I still find myself checking the battery indicator and calculating the number of exposures made, and worrying semi-subconsciously about it.  I shouldn't have to do that.

At least 5 frames per second.  Again, most of my photography doesn't require a fast number of frames per second.  But, on occasion, I do photograph moving steam engines, trains, birds, grandchildren, etc. and 5 FPS is about right for me.  Any faster for what I do wastes electrons.  Any slower and I find I sometimes miss an optimum moment.

Good low light capability; no smearing of detail up to ISO 2400.  Ninety-five percent of my images are made below ISO 1600.  I just don't do that much really low light work. Again, on occasion, it is nice to have the extra "headroom" in the ISO department.  But what I have found with some of my cameras is that at higher ISOs, detail gets smeared and lost.  Another issue would be so much chrominance and luminance noise, that trying to remove a reasonable amount of it causes the loss of too many details.  So, for those occasions where we need to work in low light, I don't think a good, detailed, relatively low noise image up to ISO 2400 is asking too much.  Most cameras today can deliver that now.  It will only get better.

The bottom line for me is to have a camera system that becomes transparent to me in its use.  I don't want to have to turn my attention away from what I am trying to photograph, switch gears to a technology mentality instead of an art mode, and have to think hard to get my gear to work for me.  I want my gear to be intuitive, competent, well-built and versatile. I really don't have to ask for more than that to be a happy photographer.

Thanks for looking.  Enjoy!

Dennis Mook

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