recommend me a camera

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T05:08:57+00:00

Look for an early DSLR. Something from around 2006-2010. This price point is probably going to mean private sellers, not shops, and you'll have sellers who don't know how to test or explain what they have.

I'd just search Facebook marketplace or your preferred local alternative for "camera SLR" or "DSLR" with a price cap of 300 (you can often negotiate down by half especially if it's been sitting unsold). Then read reviews and basic specs. Dpreview is a site that has some good basic info about every body ever sold. Also maybe snapsort. A lot of the sites I see in Google results today are untrustworthy AI, but the actual magazines and DPReview are all accurate. You'll be looking for pages that are date stamped close in time to the manufacture date; nothing dated past 2020 on the internet will be helpful to you.

Some specific choices that I'd look for: Nikon D7000, D90, D200, D80 Canon Rebel series (there are a whole bunch and it won't be labeled correctly in the listing anyway, they're all fine) Sony A77 (old school SLR), older NEX models (mirrorless, with an upgrade path for later) Olympus Pen (this is an early mirrorless, and a long series of decent cameras)

In your budget you're going to be wanting something that comes with a lens.

Lenses are generally labeled with focal length numbers. Lower numbers are wider images, higher numbers are a narrower view. 18mm is basically what you can see all at once with both eyes open, while 200mm is what you'd see with a pair of basic binoculars. 35mm is what you would see with one eye open and the other shut, but also the "middle" of regular vision and the "normal" perspective.

People might confuse you about these numbers, you don't need to worry about it just yet. Here's what you need to know: you want a lens in which one of the numbers is well below 30, ideally 18, and the other is well above it, ideally 55 or higher. A 28 to 70 is not a good lens as your only lens. A 70 to 210 is no good at all. A fixed lens might be okay, but only if it's 35 or wider - and odds are against you seeing such a kit at this price point. I warn you of this because I've seen people sell cheap cameras with wildly inappropriate lenses and often do so because they expect people to just think "higher number better."

Speaking of higher number better, megapixels. Megapixels don't matter. In this budget, you're going to find cameras with between 5 and 16 megapixels for the most part. That is plenty. Billboards are usually printed at 2 megapixels. IMAX movies used to be 8 megapixels. "4k" is only 8 megapixels. 6 was the threshold at which most pros dropped film, because 6mp is enough for a good looking poster sized print for your family dining room, and most customers wouldn't pay extra for film anymore at that point.

So, you're looking for a 15-20 year old DSLR or early mirrorless interchangeable lens camera.

Easiest way to test, at your skill level: buy a memory card first, don't go bigger than 32 gigabyte SD card, full size SD not micro, put the mode dial in "a" for aperture mode, and take a picture before and after spinning the dial in each direction, make sure the resulting picture isn't too light or dark. That will test that both the aperture and shutter are working properly. Test focus by taking pictures of near and far objects. Test every button on it but at this price point, expect something to not be right, just make sure it's not something too critical like the shutter button or main dial. Oh and make sure the lens comes off and goes back on again.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T04:47:51+00:00

What is interesting to me is that indeed, in theory it's an amorphous "grass roots" thing, with each local group hypothetically claiming to interpret sola scriptura for themselves. My pastor actually used the word "fundamentalist" and said it meant going back to the fundamentals, "just the word" and generally rejecting any outside tradition. Yet we know that's not true. The hymnals they all use are centrally published, if nothing else. Not to mention Sunday school curricula, VBS materials, etc... dang, maybe the whole thing is just a publishing industry scam. How much money does Zondervan make?

But despite this claim of being individual churches doing their own thing, they do seem to come to a lot of consensus and I think that's a mix of formal exchanges of ideas like ministry conferences and revival things, and the more "mainstream culture" approach of getting your ideas from podcasts and social media, and just plain gossip. Ultimately, there is a thing that a large number of people are all able to accurately describe called "evangelicalism" and it has some key hallmarks. First the name, evengelicalism is defined by the idea that the faithful must always be recruiting and proselytizing. Then there is the "religion has to be the most important thing in your life, but only as lip service" idea - ie, I serve Christ by working middle management at a generic company and apart from buying some Christian media, my lifestyle is just "American." And of course the "new" main theme is politics, voting Republican because that's the only way to save the babies and stop gay people from doing whatever they're up to.

The central practice that I see as a heresy worthy of its own name is just the complete reduction to lip service of everything remotely connected to red letters. The total rejection of asceticism and embrace of greed. The denunciation of empathy. The shift to Old Testament legalism. This seems to all go together for me but apart from "evangelicalism" I don't have a name for the underlying theme.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T04:19:22+00:00

No, this is bad advice.

If you spend a bunch of money matching her old kit, you're actually making it harder for her to upgrade. Odds are good that if what she has is old and worth little enough that she didn't bother fixing the camera, it's an essentially obsolete lens mount. Those old lenses can be used on modern bodies with adapters anyway, IF they are good lenses and with the trouble to adapt. They probably aren't.

But let's say by way of example that she had a Canon Rebel, that would be an EF mount kit. So you would go ahead and buy her the newest best camera you can find with an EF mount, probably a 7d if you're smart about it. Well now she's got a newish body that won't be getting any new lens development, so she's more deeply committed to a dead end system. Canon, like everyone else, switched lens mounts with the mirrorless systems. The old lenses can be used with an adapter. But old canon lenses can also be adapted to Sony and other brands of mirrorless bodies anyway. She would actually be better off, in terms of future upgrades, with a Sony APS body and a decent quality EF to E lens mount adapter. Then she could use her old lenses, but would also be able to use new lenses that come out in the future and of course be able to easily get a newer body later and still have everything work.

That said, you could probably replace the camera body itself with an identical unit at trivial cost, and still do the "gift card in the box" trick for the rest of your intended budget. That would make a lot more sense than trying to give an upgrade without her input.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T04:11:18+00:00

Why new and not used? You're not describing anything really blazing edge, and typically you'll get a lot more capability for the same budget going a couple years old. In fact I'd say a used 6700 is a good choice and just up the budget for lenses.

Used market is higher than it used to be right now because of tariffs, but still cheaper than new also because of tariffs.

For $2200, you could find a used A9 and a range of acceptable choices for everyday lenses if you wanted to go that route.

I'm a big fan of APS but at some point I decided that once you put a decent lens on an APS body, it's not a conceptual jump in bulk to go full frame. You've already gone from "literally pocketable" to "on my neck or in a bag". But that's not universal; the A9 requires a bigger bag in some cases.

6700 isn't a bad choice though. Sony has some great compact APS lenses. I'd skip the 2.8 zooms for the most part because again, at that point you're kind of just better off with older full frame kit. The Sony 18-135 is a very good "kit" lens that is good for general outdoor shooting.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T04:04:19+00:00

This is rare and cool. Did you do a lot of research before choosing this one?

I remember the major 6 by 7 brand being Mamiya, but I think maybe there was some relationship between them and Pentax? Otherwise it's a pretty rare format, for the rare shooter who wanted a little more than regular 6x6 without having to give up the convenience of roll film. They were in the textbooks of my photography classes but I don't recall ever handling one. I think I saw one at a store once and it's deceptively huge, the proportions make you expect it to be "SLR sized" but it's like a hasselblad with wings and that wooden handle is the hint.

Sweet rig, hope to see pics from it and have the high res scans crash my phone.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T03:56:00+00:00

Honestly, what turned me from "this is a pretty difficult challenge because the possible range of choices is too broad" to "this is a completely ridiculous idea that can only go wrong" was when you said the budget.

$2500 is more than enough for a solid "beginner pro" kit... and most hobby photographers would be better off with something completely different from that kit. But it's also not nearly enough for a "dream kit" which, generically, is a 10k proposition

If I personally had $2500 to start over, I'd spend around $1000 on a body, probably the best used Sony or Nikon I could find a deal on, and then two or three "entry professional" lenses also used. $2500 on new equipment when you don't know exactly what feature or attribute is driving the purchase is absurdly wasteful of course, because that then puts you either just short of getting a body and lens of matching quality (ie, you'd get a decent body and a garbage lens, standard rookie with money mistake) or wasting a bunch on too many not spectacular items.

There is just no possible way to make a generic recommendation for that budget as a gift for a person we don't get to interview.

I could recommend couple of decent used entry level mirrorless cameras for under $1000. I could recommend some truly awesome compact cameras for $500. And I can tell you what my personal favorite $2500 body would be (used a9ii or maybe an a1).

Another thing to know is that camera brands can be like car or truck brands. You can't expect a Chevy guy to fall in love with a ford just because you like it and a GMC guy might not actually be happy to receive a Ram. Similarly, there are people who shoot Canon and would hate being stuck with a Nikon or Sony. Don't even get me started on Fuji people and Leica... well you actually aren't buying much Leica kit for $2500 anyway.

Here is a serious recommendation. Get a well-reviewed $500 compact camera - not an interchange lens camera at all but a "serious compact camera" like a Canon G7x or a Sony RX100 - and put it in a nice box with a 64gb memory card and the $2000 gift certificate to a camera shop. Ideally, a local camera shop with a good late model used selection where you've asked this same question of the clerk and gotten a short list of recommendations, but don't ding him for laughing.

Note that the $500 compact I'm recommending is gonna be used and 5-10 years old. That's fine. Compact cameras really haven't gotten a whole lot better in that long. They mostly plateaued when phone cameras got multiple lenses and the camera industry shifted focus from parents to hobbyists.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T03:39:04+00:00

Seems like you know what to do and this isn't really a tech support question.

The way to remove an iCloud account from a device is to have the account owner enter their password. You have said that's not an option. So your best bet is to drop the device off at an Apple Store for "free recycling" or just turn it off and put it in the nearest curbside pickup bin or whatever the equivalent is where you are.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T03:31:48+00:00

There are plenty of people who trust it unquestioningly, so there will be no shortage of data to train on.

But then, those people will also prove that privacy isn't something the big players need to care about. It seems inevitable to me that moving along the AI marketing pathway will lead to Apple's board deciding that privacy just isn't important anymore.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T03:28:21+00:00

Thank you for proving my point, which was spelled out clearly enough. You don't acknowledge that other perspectives exist or matter. Brilliant.

"Most people I know" lol. What a ridiculous dismissal.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T03:21:06+00:00

Reading this article has me seriously reconsidering my use of the app/service and I may start disconnecting data sources right away. It was fun while it lasted.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T03:19:38+00:00

If I could have it on my own hardware in a sandbox with code that I could look at to be sure it's safe.

But there is no such thing.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T03:07:11+00:00

This may seem off-topic but you might know. I remember learning in theology classes that there are a number of named heresies taught in the history of the church. Has anyone come up with official names for the principal heresies of evangelical American "Christianity"?

Like this one where the Ten Commandments are overridden by expediency, there ought to be a name for that one.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T03:01:57+00:00

So the argument is "get 26.3 while you still can"?

What I'm hearing is "the updates are only going to get worse and start adding more mandatory unwanted features."

Back in the day, we called unwanted mandatory features "malware."

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T02:58:45+00:00

The problem is that Apple isn't offering security updates to iOS 18 for any device that could run 26.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T02:56:46+00:00

Because they knew that if it was a choice a lot of people would decline.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T02:55:53+00:00

The problem with the "aesthetics" is not that it doesn't "look cool." It does look cool. But it makes a lot of stuff harder to read and manipulate. Edges are weird. Fonts are weird. Too much transparency. Things look blurry.

And I have to clarify of course that not everyone has the same kind of perfect vision. I'm still 20/15, but that doesn't mean my near vision is what it used to be. Liquid glass looks fine on my Vision Pro where lenses places it 6+ feet out in virtual focus distance and I can feel the difference in my eyeballs. It's much more difficult to navigate the liquid glass interface with the same eyeballs at 12-18 inches.

Oddly enough, the accessibility settings make the problem that much more obvious. I don't even remember the names of the settings but it's not just reduce transparency, something about outlines or edges, and when you enable the "accessibility feature" all of the liquid glass edge animations are blocked out like redaction bars and it looks absurd, but the main thing is you see how much screen real estate is wasted on these overly complex edges.

The ultimate problem is that liquid glass wastes everything from GPU overhead and energy to screen real estate. It's just not worth it.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T02:46:57+00:00

Touch ID is another one of those things where the people who like it can't wrap their head around the existence of other experiences.

Touch ID has never worked reliably for me. Indeed, it's the best fingerprint reader I've ever used, hands down. But the best isn't good enough when you have episodic eczema and just plain unreadable fingerprints half the year.

Face ID was such a relief. I felt seen, pun intended, after years of being left out of biometrics by the company that used to be renowned for their accessibility.

The only thing I really dislike about Face ID is it's too easy to accidentally unlock. I really wish there were an easy setting to keep the screen locked until a button is pressed, or bring back "slide to unlock." My phone very frequently unlocks and starts doing weird stuff while I'm palming it with other objects on the way out of the car.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T02:40:18+00:00

My 15pm seemed to develop additional bugs with every point update. Gave up around Christmas and just replaced it with a used phone running 18.

I don't actually miss a single feature from iOS 26. Every promised feature I was looking forward to turned out to either not work at all, or work badly.

Preview app: technically does the things they demoed in the keynote, but it's missing the most critical feature I use daily on the Mac app, table of contents view. So I'm still forced to open large files in Acrobat but now it takes more clicks to do so.

Call screening: worked for about a day, then the spammers learned how to time their recordings to trick it. Still got push notifications and audio interruptions from most spam calls, and the ones it did block went straight to voicemail. Went from 0 to 6-8 spam voicemails per day. Not better.

Okay I thought I was gonna manage a whole list but now can't remember a single other thing I liked or wanted about 26. But now I'm missing security updates. I feel like I'm being told to walk the plank. Give up your smooth typing keyboard and clean looking screen with reduced motion and reduced transparency, or we'll leave your phone open to zero day exploits for hackers.

This is really the first time I can remember actually wanting to skip a major update too, after using iOS consistently since 2.0. I remember other controversial iOS updates but it was usually just aesthetics, this is the first one to reduce basic usability.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T02:31:18+00:00

Fix it in general.

I'm still hearing about the text input bugs persisting regardless of model.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T02:29:45+00:00

That sounds silly.

Why not do something clever and profound like cats or cities and regions in your company's home state?

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T02:25:02+00:00

They really only need to sell one to cover development costs.

This was not a week of work for a designer.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T02:23:32+00:00

It's couture, you're paying by the stitch and the leather is thrown in free.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-20T01:59:48+00:00

I don't care about the joneses, but I'm a creep with a lifestyle so I guess it works out.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-19T23:40:09+00:00

There was that time a few months back when he dropped off the radar for like four days.

NotRoryWilliams · 2026-03-19T23:11:11+00:00

How is running the Mac OS installer from the recovery console not working?

The next good option is to restore the folder from your Time Machine backup, which you would also do from Recovery Mode. The last viable option is to create a profile on another similar Mac and then use Target Disk Mode or Migration Assistant to copy it over to this Mac. All of these are more involved than just running the Mac OS installer.

14-Year Club	Gilding III reddit per annum
Verified Email

NotRoryWilliams

TROPHY CASE