Click, click, cat picture

Ok, I liked photography before. However, a lot of the actual learning flew over my head. If I stood under a half pipe, a skater would get mad air. And understand some difficult complex concept I was trying to learn at the time. My dad had gotten an early Sony DSLR. It was... entry level. In the money way not quite in the photography way. I used it when I could but it wasn't exactly the most inspiring camera. Maybe if I ran into someone who would've told me a lens to get for it I would've just continued borrowing it until I got tired of shooting in daylight. I haven't had the nicest smartphone but I did understand a phone was too wide for what I wanted to shoot so I started looking into camera stuff. Then I learned about mirrorless cameras. I then learned how easy and cheap it was to adapt lenses for it. Shortly before I got into it I had also become a person who was in a stressful shitty situation and bought things for dopamine hits when other things didn't work. I also tend to over research things. I bought stuff that's hard to flip and stuff that's fun but hard to use consistently.

I ended up with two Sony e-mount mirrorless cameras, one aps-c and one full frame. Mirrorless cameras don't have the mirror in 'SLR' which means there's space to fit adapters to all the different camera mounts throughout history. A place like DPreview or Phillip Reeve's blog would have better explanations. I should've just gone straight to the used full frame.

There's a lot of cheap lenses to get.

Cheap and budget are terms that get thrown around. Photography has a lot of people who think a budget lens is $500. Others realize they can reccomend a manual focus $20 lens that kicks butt (Minolta MD 50mm f2) and doesn't need much distortion correction on the computer if at all. I ended up getting a lot of cheap lenses but did end up with some overlap due to what was in that $50 or less. Due to APS-C crop factor, it seems like fast 35mm lenses got price hiked first.

Adapters can add up, Filters are important, Buying into a system is a good priority

I personally own lenses in four mounts. I never factored the price of half-decent mount adapters into that cost. For the leica M mount and the Rollei adapter I only have one lens each. Technically I only have one for Contax, but I have a second lens that also adapts to it and have many wishlisted for it. I can reccomend trying to get the Rollei/Zeiss 50mm f1.8 Planar lens for $40-65 but the lens adapter is rare and one that fits well probably starts at $35 and up. The super well machined ones that pros get are around $100, but some people settle for a "pro" brand that sits around $60. Every new lens you get in a different mount is interesting, but does have an added cost.

In addition, the filter ring sizes on the fron do vary a little bit between lenses, even a manufacturer usual diameter might change based on design changes or specific lenses needing larger front elements. I have lenses in 49mm and 55mm sizes and lens hoods that can take 58mm. I have one two lenses that take the 40.5mm usually on Leica. It'll take a lot of money in filters to get even just protective ones for some, and a little extra to get adapters. getting a nicer square based filter system might help but that's a couple hundred minimum in investment.

I should've priced out and just accepted getting certain lenses just to have matching filter and mounts. If I spent more focused on getting a set of Contax lenses, they would've been cheaper at the time and pretty much all of them have the same filter thread size. Some of my Minoltas also share this thread size, as do some others from the 60s and 70s. I never really ran into the flip flopping focus direction by buying Nikon and Pentax with my lenses, but those do have some really good deals. If I had read more I might've focused on getting Nikon and Pentax adapted. If I wanted to try DSLR it would've been easier going to those also whereas the lenses I have right now get a little weird in trying a DSLR.

Alongside that, I should've gotten a couple of modern lenses in the mount of the camera with all the electrical contacts. While the price gap has lessened due to some lenses dropping in price used and others becoming even more collectors items with actual good prices being rare, a lens made for your camera means it'll probably work as intended. It'll focus at the right differences. Wide angle lenses look less funny. Lenses communicate with the camera to tell it information so your files can tell you what lens you used at what aperture.

Carrying around all your lenses everywhere is going to suck, so even if you dedicate to getting zooms and a few primes you still want to choose focal lengths you can use so that you can reduce to three or two lenses on a trip. Even if you're not hiking four lenses can become a lot to manage.

Camera and Lenses are important. So is every other thing.

Lighting is so important. Natural light is good. You know what? there's a bunch of natural looking shots in film, video, and photography you probably didn't know had some assistance. Possibly even from just a reflector putting a little more light in shadows. Lighting is super important. Buying lighting is important, even getting the right type of lighting is. I didn't get a Flash because they're expensive, but cheap constant lighting is not bright enough for some kinds of photography. Some people are also sensitive to the flashes so even if you save up hundreds and get one or more Flashes and the control systems for multiple, you will still need constant lighting for people or photographers sensitive to bright light or have epilepsy. Product photography requires multiple lights in more places. Macro photography can be very light hungry. Amount of lights, how their setup and if they work is important, but you know what else lighting needs? Consistent color temperature! If you don't have a bunch of lights that produce the same color, then it's going to be hard to get colors working.

Sure, lens and camera body stabalization exist. Still need a tripod for some shots. Need a tripod for your camera heavier than an old video camcorder or a point and shoot. Need one that can hang a weight for windy shots if live somewhere that is an issue. Luckly you can get decent used ones but it's still hard to navigate. Lots of crud.

What else is there... Lens hoods, detachable camera straps, your used lens is not going to come with front and rear lens caps. Maybe you bought a film camera that fits your vintage lenses, well now that camera needs special batteries and film. And money to develop the film. Oh you're going to do it yourself. Don't look at your cart on the four websites you can order stuff from. You're going to need a camera bag, too. Maybe one of those glass shelves and....

Megapixels are pretty good, and more of them helps. They're still kinda horseshit in certain ways.

Ok, I'm not going to get into all the technical stuff, but let's just say resolution does matter. It also kinda doesn't. Digital photography is pretty old now. People have been using consuper DSLRs and good professional DSLRs for basically two decades. Getting a 15 year old DSLR is probably still a good get if your hobby is taking pictures. If you're going pro there's probably a few more considerations. A good photo was probably shot 15 years ago or 10 years ago digitally and it's probably fine for hobby stuff. When I got my full frame camera though, it was about 5 years old. It was actually a generation newer of tech from my apsc camera and it had significant improvements. There are technological improvments all the time, but each one individually really depens on your needs. That one generation of sensor improvement though, and switching to full frame, meant that at that technology I got a way better camera for shooting hand held, in lower light, with better digital grain from higher iso. I did miss less shots.

That higher iso I mentioned, combined with the inbody stabalization, let me get focus and take pictures in lower indoor lighting of a gray cat. Some of them look pretty muddy and would look better on a newer camera but that camera is where that stuff starts to work. Due to how a bayer filter works on the camera's sensor though, the camera or raw developing software (lightroom, dx0, etc.) has to try and figure out how to make data where it has a lot of green. (Fuji has some special stuff but is difficult to process in some software, Foveon sensor dodges the problem entirely but is hard to get a camera with.) It's worth looking into if you like technical stuff and digital photography seems like magic. Part of this makes me want to get a high resolution model camera, even one as old as my current one, just to make the pixels denser to hide the issues differently.

Maintenance, storage is more difficult than anticipated

Ok, lenses can get dust in them. Certain lenses have an easier time collecting dust inside. Lenses can get fungus. Fungus can eat coatings or just ruin them. Lenses and cameras need to be stored nice. Lenses need light in them. There's a reason why some lenses are cheaper on the used market and it's because they've got issues with them from storage. Not misuse, not just from getting hazy from optical adhesive breaking down after 40 or more years. Storage. Some lenses need to be relubricated. Some lenses get oil and gunk on the aperture blades and those need to be cleaned. If you don't use certain gear a lot it might be worth selling used just to get it to someone who might use it more than you. I have a 135mm that's too picky about light and its difficult to use.

You will want to process in post, maybe.

You can buy specific brands of cameras to get good looking jpegs from the camera. but what if you worked in post? Some people just try to get the shot the first timeand not tweak. That can work for some people, it's just that it's still hard to get certain shots digitally. Atleast for someone at my budget. My camera is new enough to just be in the era where it's easy to pull details from dark pictures. My dad's early Sony camera? Really hard to work with raw pictures. However, even if my new camera is better at it and brand new cameras moreso, digital cameras still don't handle overexposure as well as film. People who shot on film and knew the craft could develop shots in special ways, in digital you may need to do more work to get pictures to look how you want. Or even just okay, especially on Sony.

What this means is you will want to factor in a raw processor into the cost. Maybe even a few of them. And Adobe's LightRoom is subscription only now. If you're like me and you got lucky getting the last boxed version, it only has profiles for cameras up to a certain point. A few others sell one time licensed products. There's a few open source ones too, but there's drawbacks to them. Lightroom and a few others also catalog the pictures making it easy to process and keep track of stuff. One of the best features of shooting raw is that it hasn't been processed yet. No color math done yet, no processing of exposure, etc. If you took a raw file shot in 2008, 2012, or some other older date, you could load it up into newer software and process them with modern calculations, possibly getting better colors and more detail.