Guy in the cape asks "if a D3300 cool, I have a Canon that I hate" so... Canon or Nikon?

I'd take Canon over Nikon because the former introduces new tech in the middle of the lineup and then fans out while Nikon brings it out at the top end and it filters down. Nikon has a better sounding shutter. This is why I'm buying one soon, so I can use Minolta lenses because Sony's new high ISO camera is so cool. This will have actually make sense at the end odd as that may seem now.

I think the Sony stuff is worth getting, mirrorless is cool, and full frame sensor but the ISO 419K is the thing that impresses me the most to say nothing of the fact they all seem to come with Zeiss lenses.

Having said that, you could buy the oldest canon, the gen 1 stuff and slap a $1000 Sigma 100mm macro lens on it and would get better pictures than the 3300 unless it has this particular sigma lens or the $4000 Zeiss on it's 99% as good as. This means a $99 camera would take better pictures than the 3000 even if you spent another thousand on a Nikon 100 macro lens. The camera is just a sensor plus software and the software is a diminished return at each step up. Generally the same sensor is used in all cameras in a model line, or at most two. And they're all made by one company Sony. Whether a camera can take 3fps or 30fps may be a $1000 difference and the mechanics may be only slightly different if at all; perhaps one tiny part is titanium instead of steel.

Collect lenses not cameras. To be honest if I didn't have a DSLR right now and wanted to buy one know what I'd get? Doesn't matter, they're all the same. Trick question.

I'd get a lens first with the best deal I could - oddly used lenses at camera stores now run half of what CL and ebay are, 21s century e-taler-logic, it used to be the other way around, at least here.

If you know what you're going to shoot, figure out what lenses you want maybe 3 for example then find the best deal on those possible and buy any camera that fits.

That is, a $7000 Canon 5D Mark III with stock lens won't take as good of a photo of the moon as a $99 used first gen Canon off Craigslist with a $4000 Zeiss lens or Sigma $1K clone.

That being said, I'd say my biggest complaint I have about DSLR sensors is lux, not resolution and the #1 killer of good shots is ISO, and Sony's 419K ISO thing is what I'd do if I had to start again.

Now, this is under the premise all your lenses fit one camera. Say this happens: buddy has a $15,000 telephoto lens you win in a poker game. It fits Canon, you have Nikon. The quickest way to solve that problem is to get a $99 used old cheap Canona 2003 model works fine. Take a photo. Now take the same photo with Canons best camera.

You'll find little if any difference between the two photos but one cost $7000 more. If you need super fast autofocus and 30 shots a second and all sort of specific and weird software features sure, get that but it's beyond what many if not most people need. That is it's a myth a more expensive camera takes better pictures, it's more like a better camera gives you more ways take more quickly the identical picture the cheap camera gave you.

So, while one school of thought suggests collecting lenses for one camera I don't see why people don't just buy one of each camera and can then use any lens they can get.

Hate your Canon? Perfect. Buff it up and sell it on the bay on an auction that ends 9 pm on a Sunday night and sell the wretched thing and buy a worse one on an auction that ends when nobody it looking like Tuesday morning or Christmas. Let me explain:

The idea I had in my head before I actually knew anything was cameras were very expensive and some lenses cost as much as the camera. This is because in the Hasselblad era it was under some conditions very true, you needed a $5000 camera to hold the film flat so you can use a $2500 lens. You might even have two lenses.

And one store within 250 miles has one. One.

But it's not like that any more. Now the drug store across the frigging road has a sale on Nikon 3300s and also has the Canon 300mm telephoto children's starter lenses on sale half price @250. So, cameras and lenses are much more common now than ever to say nothing of cheaper in ways just as computers have become. As a sidenote I'm puzzled with everyone with a high drain device used or fun such as a camera traditionally has a freshly charged battery standing by at all times but a phone which is now defacto our last line of communication to emergency services is traditionally left to charge for long period and nobody caries a spare battery or set of batteries and yes I'm talking to you young lady. Carry a spare. Like you don't know this.

Not only that but, ccd sensors aren't film and they've had to recalibrate lenses which is what the Mark I, Mark II, II and IV stuff on lenses is all about. A cheap used Mk I Canon lens with a red line on it may not be as good as a MK IV but it's a lot better than a Mk one without the red line, right?

To put it another way, you won this 15K Olympic grade three foot lens in a poker game and you want to know which $99 sensor to stick on it? The one that fits. That's what, $400 to make this $15K lens work if you buy sensors for $99 with such brand names as "Canon", "Nikon", "Minolta" and "Sony".

Ya notice Cameras are promoted heavily and discussed frequently. Often sold half price in drug stores. Lenses are not promoted and rarely on sale even for a bit.

One is your everything. The other is a sensor with a switch for $99.

What was it you said you wanted to buy again? Lemme guess, you want the bigger sensor really. No you don't they're all overkill past 2mp for most things. I've had 1 MP photos published in fancy glossy color national magazines and the look better than film. Above 8MP and you're into Museum grade for most things. Any more and it's like running pong on a cray... craypong syndrome I like that, (you there, write that down, credit Mike Godwin).

I have the first cheap old plastic bodied Canon and have seen better ones go for $99 in my smallish home city. ; they're always around. Stick a second or third gen Mk II or III lens on it and you've spent less than the price of Canon's half price door-crasher special 300MM lens whose MK I version is so cheaply built it explodes upon taking the 10,000th picture, has poor saturation contrast and sharpness, and takes blurry pictures in a housing about as tight and precise as Paris Hilton's knockoff Gucci or Tony Blair's foreign policy.

Here's a few photos of a bunny taken sixty feet away with the above camera and a MK II 250mm lens:

It's 4K resolution. I can bump it to 10K and it'll look better than the original. But of course all the computers and internets we have won't work at 4K and we need to upgrade and the first 8K went on sale yesterday which requires a 16X faster CPU and you want to watch 8K movies? Me too. Each one is sixteen HD streams, so if you can stream 16 HD movies at once on an 4K monitor (that will show 4 of thee at once, overlap the others a little on these new $300 monitors on Amazon or something) and without dropping a frame then you have enough computing power to watch cartoons in 8K. But I digress.

If you want the D3300 on sale at the drug store understand if you get it when you blow a picture up 100X in pshop the dots won't be any different and it's all about those dots. Once you become dot-bender you know what needs to improve next and the $99 sensor and switch part contributes least. It catches the dots, that's all it does and it's job it to do this without altering them and to an extent any two, best to worst, cheapest to most expensive are all interchangeable and will not affect image quality, only how convenient was to use the switch to catch the dots on the sensor.

The'll all *work* some people prefer this or that but it's all subjective, not so much with lenses. These Have objective criteria and comparing metrics there means an increase in image quality unlike when this process is carried out with cameras.

So, this rather long winded exercise is supposed to point out the criteria for determining if you should buy that 3300.

Do you like the way the controls work? Are they more intuitive or easier to use and understand that what you have now and are familiar with even though you haven't used it. If so, great, go down the price line till you find the version of an sensor and switch that has the functionality you want for the lowest price. I see lenses at camera stores on consignment for about half of CL or da'bay prices but never any digital cameras themselves. That's where CL and the bay are handy but if you're only saving not much more than the price of shipping forget it.

What I would get is the red one. So when I see a bird or a bug and grab whatever lens is appropriate and it says "Nikon" on it then in a frenzy before it flies away I can quickly see that under a stuffed fruit bat on top of the tunneling electron microscope is a shiny red thing that's probably the right sensor and switch for this fine lens.

The red one is the 3100 that came out in 2011 and is even cheaper in ways that won't alter any dots. It really is what I plan on getting next and for the exact reasons mentioned above.

Or to put more of a fine point on it laddie, I'd but the cheapest red one so I could spot it easily but if there was a software feature I had to have even if it saved a second I wouldn't hesitate to upscale to et what I needed to do the job. It's a tool and the decision to buy one is the same as a car. Cheap? VW beetle, they work; fast? Porsche, good luck; reliable? Mercedes, but you'll pay more than the Porsche.

It's he same with cameras. You don't buy the car to have it you buy that car to transport you and he details of that conveyance are limited by how much you can spend and time. With a camera you're buying a button that puts the pictures on a memory card once you have the very expensive optics all set up and adjusted - you buy the lens to take the picture, the camera just catches it at the point in time where you press the button and sticks it on memory card. So, dial in the cheapest or most expensive camera you need but keep in mind the camera itself has zero to do with the image itself, the lens does, thus "a better picture" is never a reason to buy another camera. Differences between Canon and Nikon are minor, Nikon had a better sounding shutter, name and reputation. Canon is slightly better in the bang for the buck department but ultimately differences in the dots don't exist with any model or price point.

Hopefully these points will add to the confusion and mystique of photography.