Black Friday - How to choose a good camera deal?
Black Friday and holiday season is upon us, and I got asked what is a good camera deal and also what camera is good for astrophotography or aurora photography.
Here are my thoughts and my notes on how I search for cameras and what offers are currently available in the market. Leave me a comment with your thoughts too and your camera choice if you're going to buy one.
Notes:
I won't consider smartphones or video in this post and I won't talk about the lenses (For that I will write another blog post).
This will be a live blog, I will keep updating it with latest deals available for Black Friday 20204
Where to buy?
1- Local photography stores in Montreal
Montreal has a lot of photography shops but their prices are really similar, it's because the suppliers control more the prices, and most of them apply a price match policy. However, I can vouch for some stores that offer additional care for you and they would give you honest advices. Some stores even allow you to rent an equipment for free before buying it. My top choices in Montreal are these stores in no particular order:
2- Online stores
For online stores, obviously there is the giant Amazon and BestBuy, and all the local stores have a great online presence too, so you can actually place orders online there too. But I would love to share couple stores that don’t exist in Quebec but have usually good online deals:
What's your budget!?
Because cameras today come a huge range of line up, I would start from setting a range as a budget, this allows you to narrow down from the beginning the list of possibilities. One thing to remember too, sometimes it's better that you buy a camera body only, then a lens separately, that's because often the kit lenses (the lens that usually comes with the camera) aren't so performant. So think about a budget for whole thing, a camera plus its lens.
What's your usage purpose?
The 2nd thing I usually think about, is why am I buying that camera, is it for Video, Photo, both. Are you going to print the photos you get from this camera or it's only for socials. Which types of photography you want to do. This is key element to narrow down your selection, because for instance, if you want to take photos of Montreal's formula 1, you would want a camera with fast autofocus and a high frame rate. If you want to do Portraits and landscapse, you probably won't need a super fast autofocus.
3 specs to consider when buying a camera
In my opinion, a good camera will have a combination of these criteria: High enough Megapixel, ISO invariant, a good set of lens support. I will explain in short about these criteria below and I will have another detailed blog post about them. It’s important to know these 3 specifications of a camera to narrow down your list and choose a camera:
Sensor size and megapixels
ISO invariance
Lenses price range
To keep it short, if you want to print your photos, I recommend a high Mega Pixel. If you want to do astrophotography, I recommend an ISO Invariant camera, and if you want to do many types of photography, I recommend you do additional research on lenses and their prices to decide on a camera.
How the find the camera that fits your needs ?
Here are some tools to help you find the best camera:
During the Black Friday week, and even before that, most photography and online stores will have their list updated online, so you already have an idea of what's coming up. Currently, on November 5th 2024, as I write this, most brands also have their sale available till end of November.
Tools to find your camera
Here are some tools to help you find the best camera:
DPreview: Side by side camera comparison, this is super useful when you're looking at specs of any 2 cameras. I also love their buying guides.
Camera Decision: I love this tool because it also compares cameras and also it has a smart finder tool.
Photons to Photo: This one is for the geeks out there, and astrophotographers, this is my favorite tool to use when buying a camera for astrophotography, because I can compare the noise levels.
Other tools, I don't use often but worth sharing
Honey: This website provides you discounts for any e-commerce website that you’re browsing and it tries to apply some coupon codes.
CamelCamelCamel: This could help you find a price history of an item, specially if it's on Amazon
My list of recommended cameras:
Here are my favorite cameras sorted by brand, I recommend buying a NEW camera body then find your lenses based on your usage:
Nikon: Nikon Z50ii (Brand new) or Nikon Z6iii
Canon: Canon EOS R6 Mark II
Sony: Sony a7 IV
Fujifilm: Fujifilm X-M5
Pentax: Pentax K1
2024 Black Friday deals
Let me know below in the comments, was this helpful?
And which camera you’re thinking to buy ?