Is it time to upgrade ? New camera or invest in lenses.

YannickBloemen · November 26, 2016

Hi , my name is yannick and I have been doing photography for about a year now. All I know about photography is what I learned from tutorials on the internet and practiced.

I have been using the Sony alpha 330 with a Sony AF DT 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 lens. But the problem is that this camera is actually from my parents and now I want my own.

So my question is, is it time to buy a new body/kit or should I first invest in new lenses and later buy a new camera . But the problem with buying lenses first is that I need to buy a Sony camera then cause I want to use my lenses I buy now .

My budget is about 800-900 euro (for camera + 2 lenses if possible ). I mainly do landscape also a bit of street photography and portrait (Don’t do sport photography at all ). Also in the future I would like to buy a full frame camera but for now I think it’s a bit too expensive, I still need to learn a lot and I think a full frame camera isn’t going to suddenly make my pictures more beautiful. But it would be nice if I could use the lenses I buy now for my future camera.

So what would you recommend me on buying , new camera / kit (maybe second hand or refurbished ) or but new lenses for the Sony alpha 330 and upgrade body later .
Also which camera should i buy then ?

ziggy53 · November 26, 2016

Is there anything about the Sony alpha 330 that left you wanting more? If not, duplicating that camera and feature set should be pretty easy and in your budget.

Used Sony alpha 330 bodies are pretty inexpensive, as are used Sony DT 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 Aspherical ED zoom lenses. Then you could add one or two additional lenses as your needs require and your budget permits.

For landscapes, street and portraiture I would want a different mix of lenses, however.

While scenic and vista landscapes generally use very wide-angle lenses, the category "landscapes" traverses every focal length. It would be best for you to audit your own landscapes using the EXIF of the images to help you determine your most-used focal lengths, buying a lens, or lenses, accordingly.

Street images often use either wide-angle (WA) or short-telephoto focal lengths, depending on how close you get to your subjects.

Portraiture uses focal lengths from WA for environmental portraits to a "normal" focal length for full-length and 3/4 length, to short and medium telephoto and beyond focal lengths for head-shots and head-and-shoulder portraits. Larger apertures are often helpful in limiting Depth-of-Field to separate subject from foreground/background.

To accomplish all of these goals would be very expensive so I recommend starting with the lenses you would use most, and save up until you can purchase the lenses you really need. Most of these items can be purchased used to save a tremendous amount of money over buying new items.

My own priorities in purchasing a camera "system" are:

Lighting
Lenses
Camera

... and I do upgrade the bodies more frequently than anything else, although recent advances in almost every photographic component have made lighting and lens upgrades more frequent than I would like.

Brett1000 · December 6, 2016

I don't know about the Sony's but in general it's better to upgrade lens before bodies

LadyJemima · December 28, 2016

Couldn't agree more with Brett. If you're using a kit lens, get rid of it. When I finally made the jump from my kit Nikkor 15-55 and 55-200 to Nikkor 18-200, not only did my workflow improve tremendously, but the quality difference was incredible.

FYI, for the record, I'm a big believer in buying refurb or "factory demo" to save money. Never had a problem with either.

Is it time to upgrade ? New camera or invest in lenses.

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