Photos are nice. I still remember the film and video tape era from my early childhood. We owned many video cameras and point-and-shoot cameras. I remember using one (and losing one, unfortunately), but I wasn't really walking around taking pictures like I am now. This is because I was 7.

A bit later, I got into smartphones. I had a camera that's always on me, so I started taking pictures. At first, of the people around me engaging in various activities. But then people failed me, so I started to shoot nature instead. Moving in Canada means I had a lot of opportunity to explore nature. For example, I've taken great photos of sunsets at Muskoka.

I once scoffed at the idea of owning a dedicated camera. It was hard to imagine that it could take better photos and be as easy to use as my phone. Back then, DSLRs were mainstream, and mirrorless cameras were only begin to popularize. DSLRs are heavy and clunky. I used one during a media class in high school. Wasn't a fan of the camera at all, but this planted a seed for the interest in photography.

My first experience with a real camera is due to my grandfather (on my mom's side). At the very young age of 70, he specializes in whimsical activies such as travelling around the country, visiting scenic locations (tourist attractions, parks, reserves, etc.), and taking photos of landscapes and flowers, along with a large group of travel friends. All of them are retired, and none has as high of a stroke-to-chronic-diseases ratio as him. He gifted me a high-end compact, the LX10, after hearing that I had developed an interest. The LX10 is a nifty and capable little camera which I underestimated at first. I've had it for a while and never took it out, but one day I suddenly feel motivated to take it out for a shoot. I had a very nice day with it, and from that day I start to shoot more and more.

The rabbit hole demands itself to be dug deeper. During my brief and wonderful 2025 summer in Toronto, I acquired the X-S20 with a kit lens. I would then proceed to carry it with me everyday, everywhere it goes, and take photos of everything I found to be nice. I got to try a few lenses out as well, and got into an argument with a store owner because I keep buying and returning them. (This was not ideal, as I'll elaborate later.) I love the camera and still use it everyday. Hopefully I will have it for a long time, before GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) finally gets to me.

So how does one take photos? I'll say a few things based on my experience. Bear in mind, I'm still only an enthusiast at photography, but I believe these tips will be helpful nonetheless.

What camera to get

Many say the best camera is the one you have with you. I find that to be false. The best camera is the one you have with you and you enjoy using. If you like taking pictures on your phone, and you like the images coming out of it, just use your phone! Nowadays the difference in image quality between a phone and a camera is smaller than ever before. Plus, it really saves your wallet from deflation.

If you found your phone to be inadequate, though, a camera might be worth it. This could be the case even if the camera does not provide a noticeable upgrade in image quality, but simply a better user experience. Just because I can open a bottle of a beer with my teeth doesn't mean I won't benefit a great deal from owning a bottle opener!

Whatever camera you get, keep in mind the most important thing it should have: you should like using it. What great things other say about a camera don't matter even a tiny bit if you don't enjoy holding it in your hand(s?) and shooting with it. When you like the tool you're using, it is so much easier and more fun to create photos you'll love.

Here are the most common categories of cameras, and whether or not you should get one of them:

None of these are bad choices. Choose whatever that's in your budget and sounds apppealing. Be careful — if you opt for the first option, you will constantly thinking about better gear, even if what you currently have works absolutely fine. (Speaking from experience.)

I didn't include any film cameras because in this day and age they are no longer economically viable, especially as a hobby. Buying a roll of film costs around $20. Developing and scanning costs around that much as well, unless you do it yourself. That said, I will include some brands selling film cameras with extra fun factor.

Here's a list of camera manufacturers. The big 3: Canon, Nikon, and Sony. The smaller 3 (?): Fujifilm, OM systems, Panasonic. The unique ones: Hasselblad, Leica, Ricoh/Pentax, and Sigma. Fun film ones: Contax, Lomography, Minolta, Rollei, etc..

There are a few common sensor sizes: 1-inch, micro four thirds, APS-C, full frame, and medium format, in ascending order. It might be strange to you that medium format is larger than full frame, since it is called "medium" and the other one is "full". Well, this is because there's a thing called large format back in the film days, you can't really find a digital sensor that big now. What we call "full frame" is the same size as the once popular 35mm film. A stupid name really, since no one knows what "full" means. Full of what? The smaller the sensor, the smaller the camera and the lenses can be. The larger the sensor, the more light you can gather, and the shallower the depth of field you can get.

What lenses to get

If you decide to get an interchangeable-lens camera, choosing what lenses to get is important. There are a few metrics every lens have that tells you the basics. Focal length and max aperture.

Focal length is the length from the focal point of the lens to the sensor plane to your camera. This in turn determines the field of view of the images taken with the lens. A shorter focal length creates a wider field of view. A lens will have a different field of view for different sensor sizes. Focal length is usually discussed in the 35mm-equivalent, and a conversion factor is associated with every other sensor size. Full frame isn't "special" in any way, it's just that if we settle on a standard, it will make it easier to discuss the equivalent field of view, which can then be associated with a single focal length value. As a reference, your normal phone camera should have a focal length of around 24mm. You should find the range 30mm to 50mm to be most convenient to shoot in.

Max aperture is the widest your lens aperture can open. This determines how much light it can let in. A larger max aperture means the lens will be good to take photos at night, and to produce images with very blurry background, if that's your thing. You shouldn't need anything bigger than f/2.8. If you only shoot during the day, f/4 is the most you will need.

There are other things about lenses like focus range, autofocus performance, lens element configuration, sharpness, chromatic aberration, distortion, etc.. They are not that important.

How to take photos

Now that you have a camera, you're ready to take some photos! Taking photos is not that hard. Taking good photos is only a little bit harder than that. Here's a list of things important for good photos, in descending order of importance:

Composition is the way you arrange the things in your photo. Aim for a clean composition by having as few things in frame as you'd need. After getting rid of the things you don't want, try to angle the camera so that the things you do want feels like they are at where they should be. Trust your guts. You don't need leading lines or rule of thirds or golden ratio or any other crap. You'll know you got it when it feels right.

Exposure is the amount of light you let in at each part of the image. There are three things your camera can control for exposure: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO (light sensitivity). Wider aperture, slower shutter speed, higher ISO all result in more light, but they all have downside; pick your poison:

And when shooting in broad daylight, instead of trying to let in more light, you might want to let in less in order to keep a wider aperture or slower shutter speed for a certain look. A good example of this is the long-exposure waterfall photos you most definitely have seen once or twice somewhere. Your ISO should be as low as possible, so you have to sacrifice aperture for shutter speed, or vice versa. If you need to keep both, you will need ND filters for your lens to block out a certain amount of light.

Anyways, modern cameras will adjust the settings to expose properly. All you have to do is decide which poison you'll take. On top of this, you might want to use exposure compensation to manually over or under expose the scenes. For example, if you're shooting in snow, most of the scene will be white and bright, causing your camera to under expose, because it's trying to make the snow a neutral gray color. For the opposite case, think when you're shooting at night. So, crank up the exposure when it's bright, and down when dark.

Color is... well, I hope you know already. The main way to control this is through white balance. Your camera should have presets for sunny day, overcast, night, fluorescent lights, etc. Depending on the warmth of the lighting of your environment, you should choose the appropriate white balance settings to offset the warmth, so your photos don't come out with an orange/blue tint. Apart from that, it mostly depend on the sensor and the brand of your camera. You can always shoot in RAW format to edit your photos later, but that's more work.

Quality doesn't matter that much. After you get your camera, it is pretty much settled; denoising, sharpening and clarity sliders might help you go a little bit further. If your shooting conditions are limited so you are forced to take noisy photos (e.g. wildlife), computational denoising is very mature and works very well (e.g. DxO PureRaw). Some will tell you how much sharpness and image resolution matters, ignore them. Upon seeing a good photo, no one will have the first reaction of wanting to zoom in to check the details.

How to edit photos

After you took some photos, you might want to edit them. Go head and put them in a software of your choice. Lightroom and Capture One are the most used ones. Check out the sidebar for this page for more software.

Any photo editing software will (or should) have the following features: sliders, curves/levels, and masks.

Sliders control the exposures and saturation of the entire image. The most common ones are exposure, highlights, and shadows. Some editing software also allows to you control the hue, saturation, and brightness of certain colors, such as red and blue, and some (like Capture One) even allow you to pick specific colors from your image, enabling finer control.

Curves allow you to define a function visually to fine-tune mapping for pixels at each level of brightness. Levels are just (piecewise) linear curves. Manipulating curves drastically changes the look of the image, so I find levels a lot easier to use, since it's not as likely to be overdone.

Masks allow you to make changes only to certain areas of your photo. These areas can be defined on "layers" of masks. You can perform set operations on these layers to select complex areas, such as a certain subject, the portion of the background with certain brightness, etc. The basic tool for creating a mask is the brush, you just draw over the area you would like to select. For certain softwares, you can use AI-enhanced brushes or let the software identify foreground/background for you. Most softwares also offer linear and radial gradients, these can be good to emphasize parts of your image, and to add more depth and contrast.

Using these tools in tandem enables you to make drastic changes to your images. If you are very new to photo editing, they will take some time to get used to. I find it helpful to look at other people's photos, think about whether or not they are edited, and if you think they are, what kind of editing has been done to the original. Then, try to replicate those things on your own photos.

Congrats! You are now a photographer! If you'd like to know my current gear, here's a list.