 So I'm going to start out with this question. What makes a good digital camera? Do you know? Well, it's kind of complicated. It's hard. It's always changing. But there are a few things that you can establish as things that are not going to change over the next 10, 20 years about a camera that you want to look at and say, OK, this is a good camera. And this camera is maybe not as good or maybe not for me. You could even maybe say that. So first of all, I want you all to think about build. Whenever you're looking at a camera, you want to make sure that it is built well. So that basically means that you want it to have a weight that works. So you want it to feel right in your hands. The weight should be proportional. And it should be both not too heavy and not too light. I tend to like heavy cameras, so I like something that feels like a big heavy book in my hand, sort of. But some people like to have light cameras. The reason you want a heavy camera is because when you push on the button, the camera shakes less and you get less blurry photos. And when you have a light camera, you just have to be more careful about that. But a light camera also has the advantage of being more portable, something you can put in a bag and carry with you more. And so maybe you'll take more photos with it, which is also better. So that's a matter of personal choice. And I just recommend picking up a lot of cameras to figure out if the build is right for you. You also want to make sure that it is not too plasticky and doesn't feel like it's going to break. You want to make sure that it feels substantial in your hands and that it fits and that when you push on the buttons, everything feels like it responds quickly and that you're not pushing a button that might break at some point. So you want to buy a quality product. The best quality one that you can buy, because it's something that you want to use over many years and it's something that you would like, if possible, to keep in your life. So do your best to pick out a camera that's going to be able to do that. And you also want to take a look like I kind of already mentioned, at the controls. You want to make sure that all of the buttons are within your reach, that everything is going to be able to change things. So maybe you have some special ability or disability that will require you to be able to push the buttons in a different way than maybe a normal user would. So make sure that you're picking a camera that will do all of that for you. In terms of things that must be there, in terms of controls, I would say you really want to have some control over your white balance. And let me go back and write out white. White balance. This is an important control. And you also want to be able to control your exposure. So some sort of either exposure control of some kind or exposure compensation at the very least. Spell it right, exposure compensation. So make sure that both that and that are present somewhere in the camera. And this is something that's available even in some of the most inexpensive cameras. So you should be able to find that. Now moving forward, kind of along similar lines, you really want to take a look at what metering system the camera is offering. So a lot of people in the consumer market are looking for a matrix meter, which gives you the whole viewfinder. Gives you a really good idea of how the whole scene should be lit. And you do want to make sure that you're picking a camera that has the metering systems that will work for you. And generally, they're pretty much all cameras these days have good metering systems. So you don't have to worry too much about that, but just something to keep in mind. You also want to make sure that you're not over-processing your images. So do look around on some review sites, and we'll post those with this video, places where you can go and find advice. But you want to make sure. So here's say your sensor right here in this camera. So this is a digital SLR. You can see that because you've got the mounts right here. And you've got the prism up here with the viewfinder. And so the light comes in, ding, hits the sensor. And then the sensor reads it and sends it through a computer to turn it into a file that you can use. And that processor makes a lot of decisions about what the final video or what the final picture is going to look like. And sometimes it does what's called over-processing, which means it makes the images just too saturated or sharpens them in funny ways or just does odd things to them. So you want to make sure that any kind of processing that's happening is really subtle and really mild because you don't want your photos to look cheap or gimmicky later on. You also want to make sure that the camera is usable. That doesn't have too many features so that you get overwhelmed and you feel scared of it. You really want to be comfortable with it. So you're going to have to pick a camera that somehow meets your learning curve a little bit but also pushes you a little bit. You don't want it to be such an amazing camera that you are completely overwhelmed by it and you feel like you don't know how to handle it. You want a camera that you feel comfortable with. And know that you can always someday, later down the road when you're a better photographer, buy a bigger camera. And it takes a long time to become a good photographer. So give yourself some time for that. Now you also want to make sure that your camera is a part of a good system, especially if it's an SLR. This is less important with point and shoot cameras but you want to make sure that the lenses are good. You want to make sure that the flashes are good. So up here sometimes there's a flash that goes on there. Any other things that you might need for your camera, maybe if you want to do underwater photography, make sure that there's a waterproof case for it. Things like that, you want to make sure that it's going to be able to come with everything you need because you might have a great camera with an awesome sensor but there's only like two lenses on the market that are available to you and maybe you need more than that. So make sure that all of that fits. Now along the lines of the lens, often the lens is everything. A lot of people talk about megapixels and da da da da. Really I find that the most important thing in most cameras is the lens. And if you have a good lens you're often going to be set. You want to make sure that it has a good wide aperture. So you want to make sure that it's, and I need to aperture. Sorry, I've been a photographer for so long and I still never spell aperture correctly. You want to make sure that it can shoot in dark situations. So in low light. So you want to make sure that it has a wide aperture. Something like 2.8 is really nice but you can also go a little up north of that. You just don't want to get up into the territory of like 5.6. You want to stay below that if possible. So that is going to give you more flexibility and freedom in low light. You also want to be careful. Please, please, please, most important here. Watch out for the difference between optical and digital zoom. You want to have a good optical zoom. This is very important. This just means that the glass is doing the zooming. Digital zoom is something that you can do all by yourself in your computer by just cropping your photo. So just basically like cutting the edges off and just highlighting the spot in the photo that you want. And digital zoom, I'm not even going to take the time to correct it because you do not need to know how to spell it because you do not care. Digital zoom is such a gimmick, you don't even need it. Don't worry about that. Go and take a look at the optical zoom because that's what's actually important. And you want to have on digital cameras, you want to have a three times or plus optical zoom. I mean, if that's, if you want to zoom a little bit and have a little bit of freedom, that's generally a good number. But most cameras these days are coming with that or more. So you're probably, probably okay. So check that wide aperture. Check that make sure that you have a good optical zoom. Also be careful, there's a lot of them out there that are now optical zooms that are up to like 20 times and things like that. And you want to make sure that you're looking out, check the reviews for these kind of cameras. They call them mega zoom lenses. And mega zoom lenses can be really nice. I actually had one a long time ago that was an excellent camera. But they have something that is called, I think it's chromatic abrasion, which is when you zoom in too much, you're going to get sort of little color discolorations around, around details in your images. And it's basically just the lens reaching its optical limits where you've basically it's been pushed over the line and now it's distorting the colors in your image. And you want to make sure that you're not doing that. Now we're going to move on to I think what's the most important part, no, other than the lens, the most important part, which is the sensor. So let's go take a look at sensor sizes. First of all, a sensor is just, it's like a little light sensitive block in the back of your camera. And it's made up of lots of little smaller blocks called pixels. And each little block is saying, oh, I see brown or I see blue or I see white or I see, well, gray or white or whatever they're seeing. The sensor reads that off, puts it into a file, and then sends it to the camera. The camera then puts them all together and saves them as a file. So each of these little megapixels is very important. And they're very important in a lot of different ways. Now 35 millimeter film back from the old days was this big right here. So you can see this is kind of a very standard size. Now digital cameras, when they came on the market, they immediately shrunk down to much smaller sizes because 35 millimeters is a pretty big space. And so a lot of smaller cameras that you see, a lot of point and shoot cameras will use these sensor sizes here. A lot of cell phones use these sensor sizes here. But they're slowly moving back up right now. The market has been kind of calling for bigger sensors. And now, at least in professional photography, full frame is a very big deal. You don't necessarily need a full frame camera to make a great digital photo. There's not so much of a direct relationship there. But a bigger sensor is better because it allows you to control the depth of focus a little bit more, so the depth of field. And it also allows for a higher quality image often. Not always. It depends on the make of that sensor. So a big sensor can be just as good as a small sensor, depending on how good the small sensor is and how bad the big sensor is. So let's talk a little bit about that. What makes a difference between a good sensor and a bad sensor? So there's two different types. There's CCD and there's CMOS. Generally, CMOS is at this point known for shooting generally better photographs. But CDC is getting better all the time. And there are some incredible cameras out there that are CCD cameras. And it has a lot to do. The quality of a sensor is determined first by its sensitivity to certain types, certain colors and light, and its ability to work in low light. That's really where you're really going to make the difference between a good sensor and a bad sensor is at a higher ISO. So if you're at 800 ISO or up, that's where you're really seeing how good a sensor is. Because it's going to be really testing to see if that sensor is very light sensitive. And also you're going to want to watch the color reproduction. You want to make sure that the colors are pretty true. Even in the daytime, though, you can take a look. And you also want to take a good look, a close look, at the reds and oranges. Because this is very important also to catching a good versus a bad sensor. Bad sensors are often bad at red. They're often bad at orange. And sometimes they're bad at yellow and other colors, too. You want to make sure that the color reproduction is good, that, like we said, that it's not over-processing. You want to make sure that it has a good high ISO setting so that you can take photos in low light situations, which happens all the time. You can do that without using your flash. And both CCD and CMOS sensors can do both of these things well. It's just a matter of finding the right one for your needs. You're probably not going to be able to, if you're not, I'm your normal person, afford a full-frame camera yet. And I wouldn't worry about that. But try to, like, if you're buying a new camera, think about that. If you end up with a 1 and 1-6 inch sensor, you can still take amazing photographs with it. It's not a matter of that. But it is a matter of how much easier it will be if you have a bigger sensor. So that is a basic introduction to sensors. You want to make sure, again, good color reproduction, good quality, and oh, yes, I forgot the most important part. It is not about the megapixels. Everywhere I look in advertising and things like that, megapixels are always being sold as this sort of holy grail of the digital camera. And it is absolutely not about the megapixels. All you need as a standard photographer, you're printing your photos out on anything that is maybe the size of, if it's going to be wider than your arm is long from your fingertip to your elbow, then maybe, maybe, you need a camera that has six megapixels or more. But really, you pretty much just need a camera that shoots about 5 to 8 megapixels. It's about the standard users, really what they need. You don't need to have a 24 megapixel camera. That is just ridiculous. The only people who really need 24 megapixels are commercial photographers who are making billboards and things like that. Don't let them trick you into thinking that more megapixels is better. It's better to buy a better low megapixel sensor than it is to buy a high megapixel sensor that's cheaper. You really want to buy one. You really want to be watching out for, OK, is it maybe more than five or even, I would say, four megapixels? Is it good at high ISO? Are the reds and the orange is good? Do I feel like the quality is good? Does it look nice? That's the most important thing. You want to make sure that you're looking for a camera that is going to take quality images at a lower megapixel than bad images at 24 megapixels or 30 or whatever. So that was your introduction to what makes a good digital camera. But more than all of this, I just hope that you remember that more important than how good your camera is, it's how hard you work as a photographer and what you do with the camera that is important.