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 wallpapers you don’t need high res, 4K is 8MP and 8K is 32MP (your phone should have 50 Megapixel). I don’t think you would see any improvement with cheap cameras, which will always be more burdensome to bring with you than your phone. If you want to open yourself to big step up in quality, go full frame with good used lenses. Crispness is given by the lens, not the sensor. There are new ~1000€ full frame cameras that are really good: Nikon Z5 II (stills focused) and Canon R8 (faster sensor, better for video but other downsides) are the best value. With used lenses you could keep the kit price pretty low.