How to Choose a Camera (2024): Sensors, Megapixels, Terms

The first thing to know about buying a digital camera in 2024 is that it’s virtually impossible to buy a bad one. You probably have a great camera in your hand right now. For many people, a smartphone will be camera enough, but if you want a camera separate from your phone, read on.

The current crop of digital cameras is almost universally fantastic. Everything on the market is capable of capturing great images, provided you learn how to use your camera and understand the basics of photography: composition, light, and timing. That said, you don’t want a technically good camera—you want the right camera for you.

The right camera for you depends on what you want to photograph, how you want to use it, where you’re going to shoot, and a myriad of other questions that only you can answer. To help you out, I’ll walk through the basics of every major component of a camera you’ll want to know about, breaking down jargon and explaining things on a practical level.

Table of Contents

• What Kind of Photos Do You Want to Take?
• Glossary of Camera Terms
• Point-and-Shoot vs. Interchangeable Lens
• Mirrorless vs. DSLR
• Sensor Size and Why It Doesn’t Matter (Much)
• Megapixels
• Ergonomics and Features
• Which Lenses Should You Buy?
• Bags, Cards, and Accessories
• Now Go Take Pictures

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What Kind of Photos Do You Want to Take?

The first step in finding the best camera for you is knowing what you want to do with it, at least somewhat. For example, if you know you’re going to be taking pictures of your kids’ sports games, you’ll want to pay special attention to how good the autofocus is, and how fast it can capture images (measured in frames per second, or fps). If you know you’re going to also want to make videos, make sure you get something with high-quality video features, like 4K 100 fps for slow motion content and something to eliminate or minimize rolling shutter. If you love astrophotography, you’ll want to pay special attention to how noisy a sensor might be.

While every camera made today is capable of great images, some are better than others at certain niche tasks like the examples above. Knowing the type of images you want to create will help you narrow down your search. If you’re new to photography and don’t know what you’re going to end up liking, that’s okay—don’t worry about high-end niche features like superfast autofocus. Focus instead on entry-level cameras designed for the generalist, which will save you some money as well. Put that money into high-quality lenses.

Glossary of Camera Terms

• ISO: ISO dates back to the film days when it was a standardized way of indicating how sensitive a film was to light. It was adopted in digital to maintain similar brightness levels as people were used to in film photography. So setting your digital camera to 100 ISO should give you roughly the same base levels of brightness as 100 film speed. ISO ranges from around 50 to six-digit numbers on some cameras. The lowest ISO on your camera is sometimes called the “base ISO.” This will have the least noise. As you move up in ISO number, the noise increases, but so does the sensitivity to light. The less light you have, the higher the ISO you’ll want to use.
• Aperture: The size of the opening inside your lens. The wider the aperture, the more light will enter the lens. Small apertures are sometimes called “fast,” as in an f/1.2 lens is fast. Narrow apertures (f/8 or f/16) mean less light enters the lens. Aperture affects depth of field (how much of the picture is in focus), so the wider the aperture, the less of the image that will be in focus, and you will create the popular “bokeh” blur effect.
• Shutter Speed: This previously referred to the mirror lifting up to expose the film or digital sensor to light. With mirrorless cameras, it has lost that meaning, but still refers to how long the sensor is exposed to light. It’s written in fractions of a second, like 1/125s, up to whole seconds, depending on your camera. The longer the shutter is open, the more light is let in. This means that anything moving while the shutter is open will become blurry—for example, water flowing over rocks takes on a smooth appearance.
• Exposure: Exposure is how light or dark your image is. If your image is too dark, the photo is called underexposed. If it’s too bright, it’s overexposed. Exposure is controlled by using the previous three tools—ISO, aperture, and shutter speed—balanced to get the exposure you want.
• White Balance: This refers to the color of light. Your eyes are good at adjusting to different lights, but your camera is not. This is why sometimes your night shots have a very yellow-orange cast to them. White balance can be used to get around this by telling the camera the temperature of the light you’re shooting under. Many people use the auto setting for white balance, which is generally pretty good. I prefer always shooting at 5,500 degrees Kelvin (sunlight) and adjusting white balance as needed in software.
• Exposure Compensation: This is a means of telling your camera to under or overexpose the image. It’s useful in automated shooting modes. It’s measured in “stops” of light (it’s working like an extra aperture), with positive numbers generating a brighter image and negative numbers giving you a darker image.
• RAW: This is a generic name for a type of image file that is just, well, raw data. You need RAW processing software like Adobe Lightroom, Capture One, or Darktable to view RAW images, but RAW files can be edited much more extensively than JPEGs. I strongly recommend shooting in RAW. It gives you greater editing control over your photos.
• Aspect Ratio: This is the ratio of the width to the height. It’s usually 3:2, occasionally 4:3, and sometimes 16:9. Some cameras allow you to choose between these and perhaps more. Just remember that if you plan to print at a specific size, you may have to crop depending on the aspect ratio. I generally shoot at 3:2, which means if I want to print at 8 X 10, I’ll have to enlarge to 8 X 12 and then crop a bit.
• Focal Length: This is the length of the lens (technically the distance in millimeters between the lens and the film or sensor). This determines the field of view and zoom amount, and will affect how much distortion is in the image.
• Depth of Field: DoF is how much of the image is in focus. You can put the point of focus anywhere, but regardless of where you put it, a certain amount of the image both behind and in front of that point will also be in focus. This is the depth of field. A better term would be depth of focus, but it’s called field. The depth of field is influenced by the interplay of the aperture, the focal length of the lens, and the position of the subjects within the scene.
• Bokeh: “Bokeh” is a word for the overuse of extreme depth of field. Just kidding. It’s a Japanese word to describe the blur quality of the out-of-focus portions of an image. You might hear a photographer say an image has “smooth bokeh.” Just nod and back away slowly. Kidding, really. This means that the blurry portion of the image is nice and smooth, without harsh circles or a jittery sense of blur. Got it? OK, now run.

Point-and-Shoot vs. Interchangeable Lens

If you want to step up from a camera phone, I’d suggest skipping over point-and-shoot cameras and going to an interchangeable lens system. The reason is that most point-and-shoot cameras are only moderately better than a phone. Some aren’t even as good as your phone. You do get a zoom lens in many cases, which is a step up, but it’s not much of a step, especially for the price.

If you’re going to invest in a new system, I suggest you invest in something that can grow with you by allowing you to add different lenses down the road. Those lenses are the real investment, the things you keep even if you upgrade your camera body.

That said, point-and-shoot cameras do have one advantage: size. They’re compact and lightweight. The one point-and-shoot I own is the Fujifilm X70, and I own it because it fits in just about any pocket (it also has an APS-C sensor, which is huge for the size of the camera; more on sensors below). It’s not my main camera (that’s an interchangeable lens camera), but when I’m headed to a place where it would be awkward to carry a larger camera, the X70 is nice to have.

Mirrorless vs. DSLR

Should you go with a mirrorless camera or a traditional DSLR? The difference is in the name. Digital Single-Lens Reflex cameras have a mirror, just like film cameras. When you look through the viewfinder you see the scene reflected through the mirror. When you press the shutter button, the mirror lifts up and the sensor behind it records the image.

Mirrorless cameras lack the mirror, which means when you look through the electronic viewfinder, you are looking at a tiny LCD screen, which is showing you a live videofeed. This has several advantages, including the ability to magnify your view with a touch of a button and preview how the image will look at your chosen exposure settings, as well as much better autofocus when shooting video. Mirrorless cameras are also lighter and smaller.

Most people would be best served by a mirrorless camera. The exception would be if you have a lot of lenses that will work with only a DSLR. If you’ve spent thousands on lenses designed for a DSLR, then by all means, stick with DSLR. If you’re not already invested in a system, then get a mirrorless camera. Read our Best Mirrorless Cameras guide for recommendations.

Sensor Size and Why It Doesn’t Matter (Much)

I have never heard professional photographers talk about their sensor, or their gear at all actually, but this is the internet photographer’s favorite topic. This is also the one that matters the least in making great images. That said, let’s dive in.

There are many, many different sensors out there, ranging from the tiny one in your phone to the massive medium format sensors found in Fujifilm’s GFX 100II or Hasselblad’s 907X (8/10, WIRED Recommends).

To keep things simple, we’ll ignore 1-inch and smaller sensors, which tend to be in only point-and-shoot cameras, action cameras, and phones. That leaves us with four basic sensor sizes to choose from:

• Micro Four Thirds Sensor: The smallest sensor, which means these will be some of the most compact cameras around (with correspondingly smaller lenses), making them a good choice for travelers, hikers, and anyone who doesn’t want to lug around a huge camera. Micro Four Thirds is sometimes abbreviated micro4/3. The sensor size is 17 by 13 mm. Popular Micro Four Thirds cameras include the Panasonic G series and the now-discontinued Olympus Pen F.
• APS-C Sensor: The next largest sensor, APS-C, is where we first encounter film. The size of this sensor is based on Advanced Photo System film (if you’re old enough to remember Kodak Advantix, that’s where the size comes from). APS-C stands for Advanced Photo System type-C, and most sensors are 25.1 mm by 16.7 mm, though some manufacturers’ sensors vary by a few millimeters in either direction. These are a good compromise between the bulkier full-frame cameras below and the Micro Four Thirds above. You get a larger sensor, but still a relatively compact body in many cases. A popular camera here is the Fujifilm X100VI.
• Full Frame Sensor: The “full frame” in the name refers to 35-mm film. This sensor is the same size as 35-mm film. There’s nothing magical about full frame, despite the name, which makes it seem like everything else is somehow lesser. The sensor size is 36 mm by 24 mm. There are too many popular cameras to list here; we have an entire guide to full-frame mirrorless cameras.
• Medium Format Sensor: The biggie. At 44 mm by 33 mm, medium format sensors are huge and typically packaged in a very large body, with a very large price to match. That said, in my experience, in image quality terms, these are the nicest cameras you can buy. The two most popular options here are the Fujifilm GFX series and the Hasselblads.

You would think that the larger the sensor the better the images, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The sensor specs ultimately have very little bearing on the quality of your images, but here are a few things sensor size does affect.

Depth of Field

The larger the sensor, the shallower the depth of field at the same aperture. That is, to get the same depth of field in an APS-C sensor as a 50-mm full-frame camera produces at f/2, you’d have to shoot at f/1.4. The same depth of field in Micro Four Thirds would require a lens capable of f/1. Alternately you could increase the focal length of the lens to create greater depth of field. In general though, the larger the sensor, the easier it is to achieve greater depth of field.

What does all this mean in terms of making actual images? If you’re the sort that loves the shallow depth of field images with nice falloff (bokeh, the kids call it), then a full-frame sensor is your best bet, and Micro Four Thirds is going to be the most challenging to produce the same look.

Takeaway: Want massive depth of field or the bokeh effect? Get full frame.

Noise and Dynamic Range

The larger the sensor, the less noise or digital artifacts you’ll see in images. This is particularly true in low-light situations, where full-frame sensors are a much better option than anything smaller. Larger sensors can gather more light and tend to have smaller pixels, which will result in lower apparent noise.

This also tends to give larger sensors like full frame and medium format a higher dynamic range. This means that the range of tones from the lightest to the darkest is wider and therefore you get more details in shadows and highlights. This is not a hard and fast rule, and the difference isn’t always very noticeable. Side by side, I can see very little difference between the 40-MP RAW files from Fujifilm’s XT-5 (APS-C) and my own Sony A7RII (full frame), for instance, but put a RAW file from the Hasselblad next to one from the Olympus Pen F and you can tell the difference.

Takeaway: Shooting a lot in low light? Get at least APS-C. Full frame is better.

Camera Size

Bigger sensors mean bigger cameras. This isn’t universally true, but most of the time, the smaller the sensor, the smaller the camera. The exceptions are some of the videocentric Panasonic GH cameras, which are sometimes larger than full-frame cameras because of the video processing that’s happening behind the scenes. Most of the time though, if you’re looking for a camera that’s lightweight and maybe even fits in your pocket, Micro Four Thirds is your friend.

This also applies to lenses. Because the sensor is smaller, the lens can be smaller and often lighter. Panasonic’s Micro Four Thirds pancake lenses are tiny, weigh almost nothing, and in the case of my favorite, the 20-mm f/1.7, still have that semimagical quality that’s rare in any format.

Takeaway: Want a lightweight rig? Micro Four Thirds is better.

Crop Factor

This is a term you’ll probably run across. The crop factor is how much of the outer edge of the image you lose relative to a full-frame 35-mm sensor viewing the same scene. The name comes from the fact that you’re effectively cutting in, or “cropping,” the full-frame view of the same scene. The math is done in terms of the sensor’s diagonal size, again relative to a full-frame sensor. So a crop factor of 1.4, which is APS-C, means that what you see through a 50-mm lens on an APS-C camera is a 1.4 smaller field of view than what you’d see through a 50-mm lens on a full frame.

What does this mean in terms of making actual images? Nothing. The main thing it affects is the focal length for lenses to get the same field of view as if shooting in 35 mm. For instance, if you get a Fujifilm X-T5 (9/10, WIRED Recommends) and want the field of view you’re used to from 35-mm film, you would want something like the Fujinon XF35mm f/1.4 lens because 35 X 1.4 = 50 mm. If you end up with a Micro Four Thirds camera and want the same field of view, you’d want a 25-mm lens (25 X 2 = 50 mm).

Beyond that, there are too many other factors to consider, which is to say that the sensor size alone doesn’t determine the image quality. In the end, it’s not that sensor size doesn’t matter; it’s that there are too many other factors to make your decision based on this alone.

For a long time, the megapixel count was a favorite marketing term of camera makers. Then the manufacturers began to hit the upper limits of megapixels for each size sensor and started to focus on other things like low-light noise performance, autofocus speed, computational photography improvements, and so on. Megapixels have largely fallen by the wayside.

Here’s a good rule of thumb to help—aim for roughly these megapixel counts by sensor size:

• Micro Four Thirds sensors: Anything in the 18 to 24 megapixel range will be sufficient. In my testing, the 20-megapixel sensor in the GX85, GX9, and Olympus Pen F is fantastic.
• APS-C sensors: For a long time, Fujifilm’s 24-megapixel X-trans sensor set the bar here, but then the X-T5 came along and raised the count to 40 megapixels without adding much noise. Both are great.
• Full Frame: This is the widest range of options, with everything from 24 to 60 and a wide range in between. I find 42 MP to be a good midrange option, though I still regularly shoot with a camera that has only 24 MP, and it too is great. This is one place where I am happy to say there are no bad sensors.
• Medium Format: There are two options here, 50 MP or 100 MP. Impossible to go wrong here.

The other thing to keep in mind with megapixels is that the more you have, the larger the file size of your image. The 20-MP Micro Four Thirds sensor I suggest above produces RAW files around 20 MB in size. The 24-MP APS-C sensor produces files about 56 MB in size. Curiously though, the 42-MP full-frame sensor in my Sony averages around 40-MB images, so file size to megapixel count is not necessarily linear. Some cameras can also store their RAW files in compressed formats, which helps save some space. Either way, you might want to consider picking up a spare external hard drive.

Ergonomics and Features

Ergonomics and camera design matters, not just because we all want a cool-looking camera, but because how well organized your camera is directly translates to how easy it is to shoot with, which in turn can dictate whether you get the shot you were after.

I happen to like what some people call retro designs, which have most controls as part of the camera body—manual controls with physical dials and knobs. My favorite camera of all the ones I’ve tested recently is the Nikon Zf (8/10, WIRED Recommends), which borrows the aesthetic of a film camera, making it possible to control just about every feature without ever once using the screen. Other people love a touchscreen with a well-organized menu system, which means they never need to fiddle with a dial. Fortunately, there are cameras for both of us.

Here are other features to consider when buying a new camera:

• Size: A camera that’s too big for your hands is a nightmare to use in the field; same with one that’s too small. If you can, go hold some cameras at your local camera store.
• Viewfinder/EVF/LCD: This is where you’re composing your images; you want to make sure it’s big and bright enough to be comfortable to use. Again, test in your local camera store.
• Autofocus: This one is important if you’re photographing fast-moving subjects, and I don’t mean horse races—even just your kids running around. At the same time, if you’re primarily interested in landscapes, don’t waste your money on a camera with ultrafast autofocus.
• Image Stabilization: Today’s cameras can overcome quite a bit of handshake. If you plan to shoot without a tripod most of the time, look for a camera with IBIS and pair it with lenses that also support stabilization.
• Video capabilities: Planning to shoot stills and some videos? Pay attention to video modes, supported codecs, color profile options, and other video features.

Which Lenses Should You Buy?

You aren’t just buying a camera when you buy a camera; you’re also buying into a lens system. You can’t put a Canon lens on a Nikon body, which means when you buy that Nikon body you’re effectively turning your back on every other brand of lens. That’s not a bad thing, and there is no right ecosystem to buy into, but it’s important to understand that that’s part of the decision. These days, with very little difference between top-end cameras across brands, lenses are an important, if not more important, part of your decision.

If you know that you want to shoot a lot of night-sky shots and you have your eye on the Samyang XP 14-mm f/2.4—one of the best, reasonably-priced astro lenses available—then you also know you’ll want to buy either a Canon or Nikon mirrorless camera since the Samyang is made for those mounts only.

But which lenses do you need? Cameras are often sold with what’s known as a “kit lens.” These lenses tend to be lower quality, but are also a cheap way to get started. Most kit lenses are zoom lenses spanning the 35-mm to 80-mm range. I recommend beginners start with a kit lens if there’s one available for the camera you’ve got your eye on. After you’ve shot with the kit lens for a while, you’ll have a better feel for which focal lengths you like.

Lenses are generally divided into three basic categories: wide-angle lenses (anything from 12 mm up to 35 mm), “normal” lenses (anything from about 40 mm to 65 mm), and telephoto lenses (anything longer than 80 mm). There are also two types of lenses: zoom lenses, where the focal length changes, and prime lenses, where the focal length is fixed. Both have their place. Zooms offer more versatility, but usually have a larger f-stop, making them have less depth of field and worse low-light performance. Prime lenses are faster, meaning you can shoot wide open for that sweet, sweet bokeh, but are less versatile.

I should note that technically, you can adapt lenses from one manufacturer to another, but you often lose autofocus or spend considerable sums on expensive adapters, and the experience of using a Canon lens on a Nikon body isn’t nearly as nice as a native lens.

Bags, Cards, and Accessories

When you’ve made your camera decision, don’t forget to protect your new investment. We have a guide to our favorite camera bags and straps, but whatever you do, get some padding around your new baby. You’ll also want to pick up a memory card. These days that usually means an SD card or CFexpress card, whichever your camera uses. How fast of a card do you need? We have a whole guide to answer that question. I like these Lexar SD Cards and have been using them for about a decade now. For CFexpress, we like Sony’s cards.

Now Go Take Pictures

If you made it this far, hopefully you’ve come to some kind of decision about your ideal camera. Buy it, learn to use it, and then stop reading articles like this. It’s not the camera that matters. No one cares what laptop I wrote this on, but for some reason, everyone cares which camera you’re using. Forget all that now that you have the best camera for you.

Go shoot with your new camera. Make images. Make good images. Make bad images. Learn from both, make better images, and keep shooting. Look at photo books by the masters of the form, spend your time on the three keys to great photographs—light, composition, and timing—and don’t worry so much about the gear.