13 Best Filmmaking Cameras for Beginners and Students

In the quickly evolving world of camera technology, if you are a student or beginner filmmaker, it is often difficult to know what to look for in a camera, especially if you are not up to date. But don’t worry.

Filmmaker holding a camera

We have examined dozens of cameras and weighed them against several parameters before listing the top 13 that we feel are the best filmmaking cameras for beginners.

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Elevate Your Landscape Photography Skills To The Next Level With These Easy Tips

My experience has taught me that landscape photography is great for everyone who’s just starting out with photography because landscapes give you the chance to improve your photography skills without annoying a model or someone else. This is how I started with photography after all.

Photo by Paulo Simões Mendes

Ladscapes are also great for learning the basics of photography, since you have all the time you need. A mountain certainly won’t tell you to hurry up.

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Give Your Work Some Flow Part 1

You’ve probably heard the term workflow being bandied about in photography circles but for those among you who are a little sketchy on the details let me introduce you to the basics of giving your photography work some flow.

What is it? Quite simply it’s the steps involved in getting your photos from conception to finished product. Professional photographers (and experienced amateurs) will often have a well honed workflow that allows them to edit their photos quickly and efficiently.

Quick and efficient sounds good, but how do I make it happen? Glad you asked, this is something that doesn’t happen instantly. You need to develop your own workflow, as you become a more experienced photographer you will most likely start to develop some sort of workflow naturally. To make it quick and efficient you need to think about it and give it a bit of structure.

Ok, so where do I start? With taking the photos. Decide if you want to shoot in RAW (if your camera gives you the option) or JPEG (and which size JPEG) and if you want to use manual or automatic settings.

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The Big Three Basics

Recently we’ve explained some basic equipment terms so today I thought I’d continue with the beginner’s guides and introduce a few basic technical terms, starting with the Big Three:

Shutter Speed. Put in 4-year-old language this is the amount of time the shutter on your camera stays open. It is therefore the length of time the image sensor (in a digital camera) or film (in an old skool camera) is exposed to light.

Photographs are, generally, captured very quickly and so shutter speeds are measured in fractions of a second. The larger the number underneath the 1 (the denominator) the faster the shutter speed.

Moving from one shutter speed to the next halves or doubles the amount of light getting in. Slow shutter speeds can be used to introduce some blurring into a photo (e.g. a blurred background) or used with a tripod to get good night time photos.

Aperture. Again, in 4-year-old language, this is the size of the opening in the lens when you take a photograph. The larger the opening the more light that gets through the lens and “hits”

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