My New Camera

 Thank you to everyone who commented on my Recommendations Wanted: What Is Your Dream Camera? blog post. Here’s what I decided!

There were too many things I liked about the mirrorless camera to not go with one. The Canon M50 received consistently positive reviews from consumers, camera websites, and serious photographers. The negatives were either inconsequential to me or not confirmed by other reviewers. In fact, it was interesting to me how many professional and serious photographers own and regularly use an M50 for personal use. YouTube comparison reviews for this class of camera usually used the M50 for their standard of comparison. Another plus is that it shoots in both JPG and RAW formats. RAW is the format used by professional photographers for the best quality photos. It’s something I’m interested in exploring in the future.

Because it’s such a popular digital camera, pricing for it is very competitive. Another plus! I was able to get the camera plus a used Canon mirrorless telephoto lens and two extra batteries and stay within my budget. I’ll be looking into a macro lens in the future.

The camera does have an auto mode, which I’ll use to learn all the buttons, menus, and icons. I found an excellent YouTube tutorial by Michael The Maven for my specific camera, which takes you through all those things. To practice, I’m going to do an activity I found called “Make 30 Photos.”  I’ll put these on my photography blog. You can follow that link to see how it’s going. 

Once I’m comfortable with my M50, I plan to take a free online photography course to learn the manual mode - A Year With My Camera. I also found some free short classes over at Udemy (where I took Bill Mollison’s permaculture design course). That might be a way to sample various teachers in case I want to take a paid course (which are very affordable at Udemy, even for me!) Then, there’s always YouTube, of course.

So, there’s my winter learning project. One that I’m really looking forward to!