How to Avoid 10 Common Mistakes People Make When You Don’t Know How to Buy A Camera

We thought it would be interesting and helpful to give the 10 most common mistakes people make when trying to buy a camera from the perspective of the camera dealer. So this article will help you learn how to buy a camera more efficiently but also help understand what the salespeople deal with most often on the part of customers buying their first camera. To be clear we still suggest buying most of our cameras online to avoid dealing with salespeople whenever possible. We love Amazon for their selection, pricing, and speed of delivery on the latest DSLR and mirrorless cameras.

Also, if you want to learn more about the best camera options for beginners or want to learn photography- Read it Here

But for those of you like to go into a store and talk to someone or pride yourself in doing the dance around the art of the sale, then these are 10 mistakes you won’t want to repeat while you are in the store buying your first camera. Doing so will help you make the best decision when purchasing, not to mention save you money and potential frustration.

Learn How to Buy A Camera and Avoid these 10 Common Mistakes

Remember these 10 purchasing mistakes are from the prospective of the salesperson, remember the old adage of keep your friends close and your enemies closer, well knowing how some salespeople view first time camera buyers can help you better understand and counter their sales techniques by entering the negotiation better informed. We want to avoid having you walk in and ask your first question and have the sales person say to themselves:

“Oh brother, this is going to be a long one. This is going to be a hard one, because they’re already on the wrong track.”

How to Buy a Camera Most Common Mistake- #10: BAD OR INCOMPLETE ADVISE

Number 10, on the list, is, bad advice, all right? The buddy at work, which is the smartest photographer you may happen to know, so you ask them, “What camera do you own?”  For some reason or another, he ended up with a certain model, and you’ve decided you’re going to get the same camera as your buddy at work. Even though, they really don’t know what they’re talking about.

How to Buy a Camera Most Common Mistake- #9: Underestimating Budget

Number nine, underestimating what your money would buy. Cameras and photography, in general, is a fairly expensive hobby for a lot of people, and there are some people that think that for 500 or $1,000, they’re going to get a top of the line camera capable of shooting the Olympics on par with all the best sports photographers in the world. And the fact of the matter is, is that very high-end professional photographers do use very high-end gear, because it’s appropriate to their skill level, and they’re trying to get the most out of it. You have to be a little bit tempered with what you can get sometimes.

How to Buy a Camera Most Common Mistake- #8: Ambition vs Reality

 Number Eight, Reality didn’t match ambitions. Every once in a while I would encounter somebody who would say, “Yeah, I’m just a year away from retirement, and when I retire I’m just going to travel the globe. I’m going to go all over the place, so I need a camera that is really good for traveling.” Then they come back a year later and they may, “Well I need to return this camera.” It’s like, “Well what happened to big, all the travels?” “Well I got grandkids now, and they’re hanging around the house, and I’m doing a lot more people photography than travel photography.” And so, it wasn’t really clear the direction that their life was going, and what they were going to be doing pictures. You do need to buy a camera that fits your lifestyle, and where it is going.

How to Buy a Camera Most Common Mistake- #7: Special Deal Syndrome

Number seven, distracted by special deals. You walk into the camera store, you look online, and you kinda have something in mind. But all of a sudden over here with a shiny glimmerry sign that’s got sparkles on it, that says, “Special weekend deal.” And they have all sorts of kits, and lenses packaged together, and it’s got the bag, and the strap, and the tripod, and you’re thinking, “Wow, this sounds like a great deal.” But you’re not really looking as, “Is that the camera I want?” So don’t be distracted by those deals. If you do check out Amazon Below they have great bundle deals.

How to Buy a Camera Most Common Mistake- #6: Sweating the small stuff

Number 6, Overthought the little items. For example, in Seattle, They have got big businesses in Microsoft and Boeing, which means we’ve got a lot of techies in town. Every once in a while they would come in, and they would overanalyze these cameras. They would come by, and they would pick up a couple of cameras, and they’re thinking, “I’m thinking about camera A and camera B. Now, camera A has seven tops of bracketing, and camera B does nine stops of bracketing, so that must be a better camera.” “Do you know what bracketing is, and how often do you use it?” “Well I don’t know, but one’s got more than the other, so it must be better.”

You start analyzing these things because there’s a lot of details and ways to compare the cameras, and they just get lost in the details. Totally lost in the details, and they need to stand back and kind of look at the bigger picture of, “What sort of camera do I … What type of camera do I want to get?” And, those little items, for the most part, don’t really matter.

How to Buy a Camera Most Common Mistake- #5: Big Spender Can Fix that

Number five, though more money would solve the problem. Every once in a while, somebody’s got more money than they know what to do with, and they’re just getting into photography, and if you just kinda forgot about money for just a moment, you could walk in and you could choose any camera you wanted. Is the most expensive camera going to be the camera that’s appropriate to your skill level? Not necessarily so. When I bought my first motorcycle, I did not go spend as much money as I had in the bank on a motorcycle. I wanted to get something that was simple, and a good starter for me to learn on. Sometimes with cameras, rather than spending more money, sometimes it’s better to spend less money that’s appropriate to your skill level, and what you are doing.

How to Buy a Camera Most Common Mistake- #4: Forgot to budget for accessories

Number four, Didn’t budget for all the accessories. Many people, when they go out looking for a camera, they’re thinking, “I’m going to spend,” and they come up with a number. “$1,000 on the camera. Oh yeah, I need a lens. Well, maybe I’ll spend $800 on the camera, and $200 on the lens.

SIDE NOTE: If you need a great article on Choosing the Right Camera Lens Read This.

” What about the tripod, and the camera bag, and the memory card, and the battery, and everything else that you might need? And, “Oh yeah, I forgot all about that stuff.” There’s a lot of little things that you’re going to need, and we’ll talk a little bit about those as we go through the class as well.The more money you spend on photography, the smaller and smaller percentage of that is the camera. When I go out with my camera bag, my camera probably is about one quarter to one third the cost of everything that I’ve paid for in that camera bag.

At the beginning, it might be a 50/50 ratio, and as you get better, the camera value goes down, and down in percentage. You really gotta think about the lens, because the lens is as important to image quality as the sensor in the camera.

How to Buy a Camera Most Common Mistake- #3: Review Paralysis

Number three, over concerned about online reviews. But I love going into the forums, and the comment sections, and the review sections, to see what people say about particular products. There are haters for everything out there. I can tell you, oh, every camera that you can find, you are going to find an entire group of people that seem to not have a job, and spend their entire lives online writing bad reviews and comments about any particular camera.

If you think you’re going to find a perfect set of reviews for any camera, it does not happen. You have to kind of ignore the chatter, look at the overall scope. “Hey, if everyone says the lens doesn’t fit on this camera, that’s something to pay attention to.” You can kind of look at the overall themes of what they’re talking about, and kind of address that, and see how it fits with what’s important to you. But for the most part, I have seen so many bad reviews and comments about cameras that I use, that my camera is certainly not capable of doing this. And I’m like, “Yes, it is.” These are just angry people with way too much time, and an internet connection.

How to Buy a Camera Most Common Mistake- #2: The Wing it Research Crowd

Number two didn’t do the research. A lot of people, when they’re getting involved in something that’s kind of new, and we all do this from time to time. Whether we’re going to go out, and we’re going to get into painting, and we’ve never painted before, and we need to learn about brushes, and pallets, and all of that. Or, we’re going to go on vacation to a place that we’ve never been. We’re trying to find out this information, and a lot of people just go on overload, and they just kind of go shutdown, and they’re like, “You know, that one. Yeah, I’ll just take that one.” And they don’t really bother to get in and do the research.

As I said before, some people do too much research, and so there’s an appropriate amount of research to do, and then there’s too much. There’s a careful balance between those two.

How to Buy a Camera Most Common Mistake- #1: Forgot to budget for accessories

You guys ready for number one? All right, the number one problem, believing that a great camera takes great photos. A lot of people will come into the camera store, and they’ll be looking at all these cameras, and they’ll be asking terrible questions like, “What’s the best camera?” Okay, there isn’t “the best camera”. There’s the best camera for you. “Which one’s going to take the best pictures?” Well, these are artistic tools. It’s going to be like buying a guitar or a piano. Which one makes the best music? Well, that has a strong, strong link to how good the artist is behind the lens.

I think it was Ansel Adams who said, “The most important part of a camera was six inches behind it.” All right?  It’s not the camera that’s ultimately going to determine the artwork that you’re going to create. It is really you. This is just the tool that you happen to be using at the time.

Check out the latest Cameras and prices on Amazon.

The conclusion to our 10 biggest mistakes to make when buying your first Camera.

We know that it’s unusual to read an article about making a purchase from the perspective of the seller, but heck that’s why we thought we would do it. You want to know how to buy a camera without making and purchasing mistakes so we thought it would be helpful to explain some of the most common mistakes made straight from the horse’s mouth. The truth of it is, take your time, be informed and figure out what is best for you.

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