Rick Sammon's Digital Photography Secrets

Chapter 6. Photo Gear that Rocks

There is an old photo adage: Cameras don't take pictures, people do. However, you still need a camera and some cool accessories to capture the image you see in your mind's eye. Here you'll find info about my gear and my recommendations.

Digital SLRs vs. Compact Cameras

Most serious photographers use digital SLR (single-lens-reflex) cameras because they offer several advantages over digital compact cameras. First and foremost, most digital SLRs accept more than 50 different accessory lenses for creative framing and depth-of-field control of subjects, near and far. Other important benefits over compact cameras include better image quality, faster and more accurate auto focusing, more custom functions, improved durability, lower digital noise, in-camera noise reduction and faster image writing speed of large files to a memory card.

One of the main features to consider when buying a digital SLR is the size of its image sensor. There are full-frame image sensor cameras, such as my Canon EOS 1 Ds Mark III (left), and less than full-frame image sensor cameras, such as my Canon EOS 1 D Mark III (right). The difference? With a less than full-frame image sensor camera, lenses have a magnification factor, so they appear to function as slightly longer lenses. For example, ...