Hi everyone!
Today I went on a walk in a park and had a lot of fun trying to find interesting angles and subjects to snap a pic with my phone. I really loved walking around "with the eye of a photographer" and wanted to hear your recommendations on what would be a good first buy geared towards my interests. While the pictures were satisfactory from my OnePlus 12, I am aware that they would never rival the quality of bigger sensors/lenses.
I owned one DSLR back in the days but never got the interest of playing in the manual and semi-manual modes.
My ideal camera would be one relatively simple to operate but offering good specs that would make computer touch-ups (cropping, colours, balance, etc) as I think that my interest will be on detecting good capture opportunities more than finding optimal camera settings.
My guess is an entry level DSLR/mirrorless would be interesting to explore different lenses?
The products will probably be computer wallpapers (4k HDR screens) and I would love to prioritize the crispiness/resolution.
As I don't plan to do more than play with it from time to time, I am looking in the sub 1.5k $ area (new or used)
TL;DR: Looking for a worthwhile step-up from a cellphone to capture crisp wallpapers of nature/sceneries. +-1500$ new/used.
For a step up, a compact camera without interchangeable lenses is rhe first place to look. You get real benefit from an electronic viewfinder EVF. As you get a clear view even in bright sunlight. But it costs more. There are 1" sensors that produce photos of reasonable quality. These keep the price and size down. It's not necessary to go to the next sensor size up, micro43 or APSC. But that would be the next step. Along with interchangeable lenses. A DSLR doesn't have any benefit over mirrorless and just adds bulk to make you leave it at home more.