BAL wrote:
Heading out for Safari and have a very old film AE1 canon.
Want a digital camera and telephoto lens that won't break the bank. Any suggestions. Will later want to use for landscape, travel photography.
Any suggestions for new or used?
Thank you,
BAL
You'll get a lot of NiCan recommendations--especially because you have a Canon, but consider also Pentax DSLRs and Fuji MILC. Both are more rugged than the "prosumer" models of CaNik. You could also consider the a7 series of Sony which are also more rugged.
(Truth in Advertising: I shoot two Sonys, an a6000 and an a6300. I have never had a problem with either. The a6300 has gone to Death Valley to hunt wildflowers, to Mazatlan, MX beaches and cityscapes and lastly just got back from San Miguel de Allende and in the process of processing. BTW, I did not like SMA. Many tourist love it, so maybe its my curmudgeon factor, but I really did not find it all that wonderful. Too many "artists", too many expats, very picturesque cobblestone streets, but not much else.)
Get a good quality computer with at least 8gb of RAM, a solid state drive of 250-500 gb. Windows 10. An I7 late generation processor (I think they are now into generation 8, but maybe 7 will be more available and good enough.) I recommend DELL. I used to like HP, but HP has gone down the drain. If you buy at Costco, they give you two years of free tech support. The manufacturers support on computers has gone sour, so Costco created their own and trained them. I used to buy from BestBuy, but their support is really bad. Azus makes great computers, and they may have gotten better but they have a reputation for poor support.
I've been into computers since 1977, including three Apples and Macs. While some may swear by Apple, I have found myself more often swearing AT Apple. They are locked down and limited (As well as three times the price for comparable power.) And when there is a problem, you get to "make an appointment for next week," "Oh it's an emergency? How about day after tomorrow?"
BUT add a USB outboard hard drive--Western Digital or Seagate, and copy every image to both the internal and the external so you have at least a minimum backup. (Some Hogs have reported bad Seagate drives and the companies like Google that use thousands of hard drives have also remarked on them being less reliable.) Hard drives do go bad, so heed this warning. Two is better than one and three is even better. (I just had two hard drives fail in the last four months. One was a WD, about 3 yo and the other a Seagate, about 4 yo)
Consider trying out Affinity Photo instead of Photoshop. It will do everything you will want--and much of it better. (I wondered why it worked better, but then got confirmation that Photoshop is still the basic 1990s code with a lot of added pieces and polishing. Affinity is new code with more modern programming techniques.) Affinity does have a learning curve, but it is not that difficult to learn and lots of tutorials.