Most camera advice answers the wrong question. It tells you which camera is best when what you actually need to know is which differences matter to you and which are marketing. This guide explains every decision in the order you have to make it, and sends you to a shortlist only at the end.
Photo spaceWide lead image: an overhead flat lay of a camera body with three lenses, a memory card, a spare battery and a notebook, on a plain desk. Roughly 1600 by 700.
There are perhaps eight decisions inside a camera purchase, and only two or three of them will matter to you. The difficulty is that the marketing emphasises the ones that photograph well in a specification table, while the ones that decide whether you enjoy owning the thing are duller: how heavy it is with a lens on, whether the screen faces you, how much a second lens costs, and how long it records before it stops.
This guide works through all of them in the order you actually meet them. Every technical figure quoted is either a published standard or a manufacturer’s own specification, and where a number is a convention rather than a measured fact we say so. This is a Researched guide. Creator Gear has not used these cameras, so nothing here is presented as our own measurement.
If you read one section
Read what will you use it for and then lens ecosystems. The first decides which specifications matter to you, and the second is the only decision on this page you cannot reverse without selling everything.
What is in this guide
Twelve decisions, in order
Work through them in sequence if you are starting from nothing, or jump to the one you are stuck on.
Statutory rights, grey imports, refurbished stock, cashback and VAT.
Camera types
The two distances are drawn to scale against each other from Canon published figures: the RF mount places the sensor 20 mm behind the mount, against 44 mm for EF. Nikon publishes 16 mm for Z. Everything else in the drawing is a schematic rather than a scale drawing of any particular body.
Mirrorless is where every manufacturer now puts its development. There is no mirror and no optical viewfinder, so the sensor feeds an electronic viewfinder and the rear screen directly, which is why you see the exposure and the colour before you take the picture rather than after. It also puts the focus system on the sensor itself, which is the underlying reason mirrorless video autofocus is in a different league to a DSLR.
DSLRs are less dead than the internet suggests, and the honest position needs care. No major manufacturer has issued a formal announcement discontinuing DSLRs as a class. Canon still listed several DSLR bodies on its UK site and was selling them new when we checked in July 2026, and Nikon has publicly stated that it continues the production, sales and service of F-mount products. What has stopped is new development. Treat it as a run-out category rather than a dead one, and buy into it only with your eyes open.
Fixed-lens compacts are the surprise of the last two years. Industry shipment data for the first four months of 2026 showed built-in-lens camera shipments running well above the equivalent 2025 months, while interchangeable-lens shipments were flat or falling. Phones took the bottom of that market long ago, so what is left is premium: large sensors, fast fixed lenses, and cameras people buy precisely because they do one thing.
Bridge and superzoom cameras looked finished until Sony announced a new RX10 in July 2026, the first in that line since 2017. The category exists for one reason: an enormous zoom range in a single sealed body with no lens changes. The trade is a small sensor, so a bridge camera is a reach-and-convenience buy rather than an image-quality one.
Which type suits which buyer
Mirrorless
Why removing the mirror box changes the camera: the space it occupied sets the flange distance, and therefore the lens designs that are possible.
The default answer for almost everyone. Best autofocus, best video, the widest and newest lens ranges, and every manufacturer is still developing it. The costs are battery life, because the sensor and viewfinder run continuously, and price at the entry point.
DSLR
Cheap at the entry level and genuinely better on battery, because an optical viewfinder consumes no power to show you an image. Against that, video autofocus is weak by design and no new lenses are coming. Reasonable as a first stills camera on a budget, poor as a system to build on.
Fixed-lens compact
One lens, no decisions, pocketable. The premium end pairs an APS-C or one-inch sensor with a fast prime or a bright zoom and is bought by people who already own a system camera. The limit is obvious: what you see is what you get, forever.
Bridge and superzoom
A single body covering a range no interchangeable-lens kit reaches without three lenses and a bag. The sensor is small, usually one-inch type or less, so it is a convenience and reach purchase rather than a quality one.
What about a phone?
For social video, snapshots and anything where the best camera is the one in your pocket, a modern phone is genuinely enough. A dedicated camera earns its place through a physically larger sensor, real optical zoom, control over depth of field, an interchangeable lens, and audio inputs. If none of those five is something you want, you may not need a camera at all, and we would rather say so.
What will you use it for?
This is the most useful section on the page, and it takes five minutes. Almost every disagreement about cameras is really a disagreement about use. A body that is wrong for a wedding photographer is right for a hillwalker, and the specification that matters enormously to one is irrelevant to the other.
Write down, honestly, the three things you will photograph or film most in the next year. Not the things you imagine doing, the things you will actually do. Then check the list below and note which two or three of the sections that follow matter to you. You can skim the rest.
Match your use to what matters
Everyday and family
Weight, a screen that moves, automatic modes that work and a lens in the box. Sensor size and resolution barely register. Read the sections on camera types, battery life and budget, and skip most of the video material.
Travel and landscape
Weight with a lens fitted, weather sealing and stabilisation. A smaller sensor with smaller lenses often beats a larger sensor you leave behind. Read sensor sizes, stabilisation and weather sealing carefully.
Portraits and events
Autofocus with eye detection, low-light performance and lens choice. This is where a larger sensor and a fast lens genuinely earn their price. Read autofocus and lens ecosystems, and pay attention to card slots if the work is paid.
Sport, wildlife and pets
Burst rate, subject-detection autofocus and telephoto lens availability, in that order. Resolution matters mainly as cropping room. Read autofocus, memory cards and lens ecosystems.
YouTube and video
Recording limits, audio ports, screen articulation, autofocus behaviour and streaming support. Almost nothing on the stills side of a specification sheet applies. Read video features and stabilisation, then go to the video shortlist.
Paid client work
Two card slots, weather sealing, service network and consistency between bodies. Reliability outranks every headline figure, and a camera that cannot back up in camera is a risk you are carrying yourself.
If your three answers pull in different directions, that is normal and it is what hybrid cameras exist for. What is not normal is buying a professional body for a use case that a camera at a third of the price covers completely, which is the single most common way people overspend.
Sensor sizes explained
Drawn to scale from each maker’s own published dimensions. Full frame is quoted here at Canon’s 36 by 24 mm; Nikon and Sony both publish 35.9 by 23.9 mm for the same format. APS-C varies by a few tenths of a millimetre between makers and even between bodies from one maker, so the dashed outline is Canon’s, which is the one that differs enough to see. The 1/1.3 inch rectangle uses OmniVision’s published image area for that sensor class. Crop factors are calculated from the dimensions rather than published by anyone.
Sensor size is the specification people fixate on, and it does matter, but not for the reasons usually given. Full frame is nominally 36 by 24 millimetres, and manufacturers publish figures slightly under that: Canon states 35.9 by 23.9 millimetres for the EOS R6 Mark III. Its diagonal of roughly 43.3 millimetres is the reference for every crop factor you will see quoted.
Two details catch people out. Canon APS-C is smaller than everyone else’s, at approximately 22.3 by 14.8 millimetres against roughly 23.5 by 15.7 for Fujifilm, Sony and Nikon, which is why Canon quotes a 1.6 times crop factor and the others 1.5. And one-inch type is not one inch: Sony publishes 13.2 by 8.8 millimetres, a diagonal of about 15.9 millimetres and a crop factor of roughly 2.7. That naming convention is inherited from 1950s broadcast tubes and describes a notional tube diameter, not the sensor.
Medium format is also less of a leap than the name implies. Fujifilm publishes 43.8 by 32.9 millimetres for the GFX100 II sensor, which is roughly 1.7 times the area of full frame rather than the several-times-larger jump the phrase suggests from the film era.
Sensor sizes compared
Sensor areas drawn to scale from the manufacturers’ own published dimensions in millimetres. A dashed outline means the figure is an industry measurement rather than one the maker publishes.
Format
Published dimensions
Crop factor
Typical use
Medium format
43.8 x 32.9mm (Fujifilm GFX100 II)
0.79x
Studio, landscape, commercial
Full frame
35.9 x 23.9mm (Canon EOS R6 Mark III)
1.0x
Professional stills and video
APS-C, most makers
Approx. 23.5 x 15.7mm
Approx. 1.5x
Enthusiast and entry system cameras
APS-C, Canon
Approx. 22.3 x 14.8mm (Canon EOS R7)
Approx. 1.6x
Canon entry and enthusiast bodies
Micro Four Thirds
Conventionally 17.3 x 13.0mm
Approx. 2.0x
Travel, video, long telephoto reach
One inch type
13.2 x 8.8mm (Sony RX100 VII)
Approx. 2.7x
Premium compacts and bridge cameras
What sensor size genuinely changes is threefold. It changes the total light collected, because a physically larger sensor gathers more of it at the same aperture and shutter speed, which is why larger formats generally show less noise at equivalent framing. It changes depth of field at equivalent framing, because a smaller sensor needs a shorter focal length to frame the same subject and shorter focal lengths give more depth of field. And it changes lens size, weight and cost, because covering a larger image circle at the same equivalent aperture requires physically larger glass.
What it does not change is exposure: a given aperture and shutter speed produce the same image brightness on any format. It does not change perspective, which is set entirely by how far you stand from the subject. And it does not by itself determine resolution, dynamic range or autofocus quality, all of which depend on the specific sensor and processor rather than on the format.
The Micro Four Thirds dimensions above are the conventional figures. We were unable to verify them from the Four Thirds standard body’s own site or from an OM System or Panasonic specification page, so they are given as convention rather than as a manufacturer specification.
Megapixels explained
Resolution affects exactly three things: the largest print or display at a given viewing distance, how far you can crop and still have enough pixels left, and how much storage and processing your files demand. It does not affect dynamic range, colour, autofocus, low-light performance or how sharp a picture looks at normal sizes. Those come from the sensor design, the processor and the lens.
The arithmetic is worth doing once. At the conventional 300 pixels per inch print standard, a 24 megapixel file of 6000 by 4000 pixels prints roughly 51 by 34 centimetres. A 45 megapixel file prints about 27 by 18 inches, and a 102 megapixel medium format file about 39 by 29 inches. That 300 pixels per inch figure is a print industry convention for images held at reading distance, not a physical limit; human visual acuity of about one arcminute corresponds to roughly 87 pixels per inch at a viewing distance of one metre, which is why large prints viewed from across a room need far less resolution than the convention implies.
Cropping headroom scales with area rather than with the linear crop, which is where intuition fails. Cropping a 45 megapixel full frame file to the area of an APS-C sensor, a 1.5 times linear crop, leaves about 20 megapixels. Crop to twice the linear magnification and you keep a quarter of the pixels, so roughly 11 megapixels. That is the real argument for high resolution: reach you did not have to carry.
The diminishing return, in one line
Going from 24 to 45 megapixels is only a 1.37 times increase in linear resolution, and from 45 to 102 only a further 1.5 times, while file sizes rise roughly in proportion to pixel count. You are paying twice the storage for a third more detail in each direction.
Higher resolution also demands more of your lenses and your technique. Any given amount of camera shake, focus error or lens aberration occupies more pixels on a higher resolution sensor, so the benefit is only realised with good glass, accurate focus and adequate shutter speeds. Buying a high resolution body and fitting a slow kit zoom to it is a common and expensive mistake.
One more thing that surprises people: sensor resolution and video resolution are almost unrelated. 4K at 3840 by 2160 is only about 8.3 megapixels per frame, which is why a 20 megapixel one-inch sensor records perfectly good 4K. 8K at 7680 by 4320 is about 33.2 megapixels per frame, which is why 8K generally appears only on high resolution bodies.
For the overwhelming majority of UK buyers, producing images for the web, prints up to A3 and social video, somewhere around 20 to 26 megapixels is already more resolution than the output uses. Anything above that is bought for cropping latitude and large format printing.
Video features
Photo spaceA camera on a tripod with an external monitor attached showing a flat log image alongside a graded one. Roughly 1200 by 600.
Start with what the resolutions actually mean. The broadcast standard ITU-R BT.2020 defines exactly two ultra high definition formats, 3840 by 2160 and 7680 by 4320, both 16:9. Cinema 4K is a different and wider format: the DCI specification defines 4K as 4096 by 2160, which is the difference when a camera offers both UHD and DCI or C4K. And 6K has no standardised definition at all. There is no ITU or DCI 6K, so it is a manufacturer term for an intermediate sensor readout, used either for open gate capture or to oversample a 4K output.
How the 4K is produced matters more than the number. Oversampled 4K reads the full sensor width and downscales, which reduces aliasing and noise. Line-skipped or pixel-binned 4K discards or averages sensor rows to hit the readout budget, which costs detail and can introduce moire. Manufacturers rarely label which method a mode uses, so when a specification says something like 4K oversampled from 6K, that is a meaningful claim worth looking for.
Bit depth and chroma subsampling decide how much you can do in the edit. 8-bit gives 256 levels per colour channel and 10-bit gives 1,024, which is the difference between visible banding in a gradient and a clean sky. 4:2:0 subsamples colour by a factor of two both horizontally and vertically, 4:2:2 subsamples horizontally only, and 4:4:4 not at all, which is why 4:2:2 is preferred for keying and heavy grading.
Video terms, decoded
Term
What it means
Where the figure comes from
Does it matter to you?
4K UHD
3840 x 2160, 16:9
ITU-R BT.2020
Yes, this is the delivery standard
DCI 4K or C4K
4096 x 2160, wider than UHD
DCI Digital Cinema System Specification
Only for cinema delivery or crop room
6K
No standard definition exists
Manufacturer term
Only as a source for oversampled 4K
8K
7680 x 4320, about 33.2MP per frame
ITU-R BT.2020
Rarely, unless you crop or reframe heavily
10-bit
1,024 levels per channel
Encoding standard
Yes if you grade at all
All-Intra
Each frame compressed independently
Codec choice
Yes, it dictates your card requirement
The 180 degree shutter, and why it forces you to buy filters
The convention is a shutter speed of roughly one over twice the frame rate, so 1/50 second at 25fps. It is a look carried over from rotary shutters on film cameras, not a standard. In daylight that combination overexposes badly at base ISO, which is why daylight video needs neutral density filters rather than a faster shutter.
Codec choice has a direct and calculable effect on what card you need. Panasonic publishes C4K at 59.94p in 4:2:2 10-bit All-Intra at 800 megabits per second against 200 megabits for the Long GOP version of the same mode. Divide by eight and All-Intra needs 100 megabytes per second sustained, which exceeds the 90 megabytes per second that even a V90 SD card guarantees, so it forces CFexpress. The Long GOP version needs about 25 megabytes per second and sits comfortably inside a V30 card.
Log profiles are an encoding rather than a look. Sony describes S-Log3 as based on the Cineon digital negative and as offering roughly one and a half stops more dynamic range than S-Log2. The cost is real: footage looks flat and desaturated out of camera and must be graded or have a LUT applied, it usually needs 10-bit to avoid banding, and many implementations raise the base ISO, which reduces low-light headroom. If you will not grade, log makes your work harder and your pictures worse.
Recording limits are the last piece, and the received wisdom is wrong. The old twenty nine minute fifty nine second cap was not a video tax; it was a customs classification consequence. The European Commission confirmed that video camera recorders attracted import duty of 4.9 or 14 per cent while still image cameras were duty free, and the distinction partly rested on recording capability. That changed under the WTO Information Technology Agreement from 1 July 2019. Any limit on a current camera is therefore thermal or file-system driven, and manufacturers publish it: figures range from one hour on small compacts to six hours on actively cooled bodies, with a small number claiming unlimited recording within a stated temperature range.
Autofocus systems
The fundamental division is between phase detection and contrast detection. Phase detection works out both the direction the lens must move and how far, so it drives straight to focus. Contrast detection cannot initially establish direction, which is why it hunts: it has to rock the lens past the point of sharpest focus and come back. Canon describes this difference in exactly those terms in its own technical material, and it is the reason a contrast-only camera looks hesitant in video even when it is accurate in stills.
On-sensor phase detection is what made mirrorless viable. It removes the DSLR’s separate autofocus module along with the calibration problem that came with it, because the focusing and the imaging happen on the same surface. Canon’s Dual Pixel approach splits each pixel into two light-sensitive halves that each report separately, so the whole sensor does phase detection while still recording a full image.
Coverage and subject recognition are the two published figures worth comparing. Canon states 100 per cent horizontal and vertical coverage on the EOS R6 Mark III with 1,053 automatically selected areas, and publishes a specific detection list: humans including eyes, face, head, upper body and body; animals covering dogs, cats, birds and horses; and vehicles covering racing cars, motorbikes, aeroplanes and trains. Sony publishes a comparable list and lets you choose which part of an animal or bird is prioritised.
What to check, and what to ignore
Check the coverage figure
Published as a percentage of the frame horizontally and vertically. A system covering the whole frame lets you compose freely rather than focusing and recomposing.
Check the low-light rating
Quoted in EV, and lower is better. A figure such as minus 6.5 EV or minus 10 EV tells you how dim a scene the system will still lock in. This is a genuinely comparable specification.
Check the subject list against your subjects
Detection lists are species and category specific. A camera that lists dogs, cats, birds and horses says nothing about how it handles a rabbit or a lizard.
Ignore the raw point count
Thousands of selectable positions sounds impressive and tells you very little. Coverage, low-light rating and the quality of the tracking algorithm decide whether it works.
For video, look for behaviour controls
Sony publishes an AF Transition Speed setting on a seven point scale and a subject shift sensitivity control. Those matter more for video than raw acquisition speed, because a fast snap to a new subject looks like a mistake on screen.
Focus breathing compensation
A video-specific feature that corrects the change in angle of view as focus shifts. Sony notes that enabling it changes the angle of view and can affect image quality, so it is a trade rather than a free win.
One structural point about DSLRs belongs here. A DSLR’s dedicated phase detection module sits in the light path only when the mirror is down, and the mirror is up throughout live view and video. That is why DSLR video autofocus lags mirrorless, and it is an architectural limit rather than something firmware can fix.
Finally, autofocus performance can be capped by your lens rather than your body. On some systems, third-party lenses have historically been restricted in the very highest continuous shooting modes, with those restrictions lifted selectively through firmware. If you plan to buy third-party glass and shoot at extreme frame rates, check the current position for the specific lenses you want.
Image stabilisation
Stabilisation is measured to a published industry method, CIPA DC-011, and the 2024 revision is why you now see two numbers instead of one. Canon states up to 8.5 stops at the centre and 7.5 stops peripheral for the EOS R6 Mark III, citing that standard explicitly. The measurement compares the longest exposure times that remain acceptably sharp with and without stabilisation, so one stop means the ability to shoot at twice the exposure time and get the same result.
Every rating is conditional, and the conditions are part of the specification. Fujifilm publishes its X-T5 figure as seven stops based on the CIPA standard, for pitch and yaw shake only, with a specific lens mounted. A stop rating quoted without those conditions is not comparable with another one, which is worth remembering when a review puts two figures side by side.
There are three kinds of stabilisation and they do different jobs. In-body sensor-shift works with any lens including fully manual ones and is generally more useful at wide and normal focal lengths. Lens-based stabilisation corrects angular shake inside the optical path and is generally more effective at long focal lengths. Digital or electronic stabilisation crops into the frame and enlarges, which costs you angle of view.
The digital stabilisation trade, stated by the manufacturer
Sony says plainly that changing the SteadyShot setting changes the angle of view, that Active mode narrows it, and that Dynamic Active performs cropping and pixel enlargement. Canon warns that when movie cropping is already in use, enabling digital stabilisation crops the centre of the screen further. If you bought a wide lens for handheld video, electronic stabilisation is quietly taking some of it back.
The two systems combine on many bodies, and manufacturers publish the combined figure separately. OM System, for example, quotes up to 8.5 EV steps for its in-body system with one lens and up to 8.5 EV steps for its synchronised in-body and lens system with another, each with the lens and focal length stated.
What stabilisation cannot do is more important than what it can. It corrects camera movement only, so a moving subject at a slow shutter speed is still blurred no matter how many stops the camera claims. It does not reduce noise, does not increase depth of field, and does not correct rolling shutter skew from fast panning. And it does not address the low-frequency bounce of walking, which is precisely why gimbals remain a separate product category.
Electronic stabilisation is also unavailable in demanding modes on many cameras. Sony lists its Active and Dynamic Active modes as unselectable in 8K, at frame rates of 120p and above, and in high frame rate slow and quick motion. So the mode you most want smoothed is often the one where the camera will not smooth it.
We could not fetch the CIPA standard document itself during this research, so the description of the method above is drawn from manufacturer citations of the standard and from secondary descriptions of it. The manufacturers’ own stop ratings and stated conditions are quoted directly from their specification pages.
Lens ecosystems
Nikon, Canon and the L-Mount Alliance publish these figures themselves. Sony, Fujifilm and Micro Four Thirds publish no inner diameter at all, so those three are drawn from an industry measurement table and marked with a dashed ring rather than presented as fact. Fujifilm does publish the 17.7 mm flange distance, just not the diameter.
Bodies get replaced every few years. Lenses last decades, and they are usually worth more than the camera. This makes the mount the most consequential decision in the whole purchase, and it is the one people give the least thought to because it is invisible in a specification table.
The single biggest difference between mounts in 2026 is third-party access. Sony E is the most open, with officially licensed autofocus lenses from Sigma, Tamron, Viltrox and others and by some distance the largest catalogue. Canon RF is the notable exception at full frame: Canon opened the mount to Sigma and Tamron in April 2024 but only for APS-C RF-S lenses, and as of 2026 there is still no officially licensed third-party autofocus lens for full frame RF. If you buy full frame Canon, you are buying Canon lenses at Canon prices for the foreseeable future.
Nikon Z has moved the other way, gaining licensed third-party full frame options while simultaneously enforcing its mount patents against unlicensed makers through the courts. Fujifilm X is officially open with licensed Sigma and Tamron autofocus lenses and a wide Viltrox range, though the catalogue is smaller than Sony’s. Fujifilm GFX has almost no third-party autofocus support, so medium format buyers should assume Fujifilm glass. L-mount is the most formally collaborative, run as an alliance whose members include Leica, Sigma, Panasonic, DJI, Samyang, Blackmagic Design, Sirui, Viltrox and others, each licensed to develop for the shared standard. Micro Four Thirds remains a multi-vendor open standard with a large native catalogue, though third-party autofocus development has slowed relative to the bigger formats.
Where each mount stands
Lens mount diameters and flange distances, to scale, from published figures.
Mount
Third-party autofocus lenses
Catalogue size
Practical consequence
Sony E
Open and extensive
Largest of any mirrorless mount
Cheapest route to a full lens set
Canon RF
APS-C only, no full frame
Large but Canon only at full frame
Budget for Canon prices on full frame
Nikon Z
Licensed options now available
Growing
Improving quickly, still behind Sony E
Fujifilm X
Open, licensed Sigma and Tamron
Good and growing
Strong value at APS-C
Fujifilm GFX
Minimal
Small and expensive
Assume Fujifilm glass only
L-mount
Alliance members, many brands
Substantial and shared
Leica, Panasonic and Sigma interoperate
Micro Four Thirds
Open standard, slowing development
Very large and often cheap
Smallest and most affordable lenses
Adapting your existing SLR lenses is usually well supported when you stay within a brand. Canon states that its EF to RF adapter maintains the same performance and functionality as on its DSLRs, and equivalents exist for the other systems. What you give up is length, weight and an extra mechanical interface, plus a cropped image circle if you adapt APS-C-only lenses onto a full frame body.
Cross-brand adaptation is a different matter. Adapting one manufacturer’s lenses onto another’s body typically costs autofocus speed and reliability, and often costs some functions entirely. It is a way of using glass you already own, not a strategy for building a system.
The practical advice is simple. Before you buy a body, price the two or three lenses you expect to own within three years on each mount you are considering. That comparison changes people’s minds far more often than any specification does.
Battery life
CIPA battery ratings are produced by a fixed laboratory procedure rather than by normal use, and understanding the procedure explains why the numbers behave so strangely. Testing runs at 23 degrees and 50 per cent humidity, flash fires on one of every two pictures, a motorised zoom is driven fully both ways before every shot, and the camera is switched off after every tenth frame. Shooting proceeds at one picture every thirty seconds.
That cadence is deliberately punishing on power cycling, which is why real results diverge in both directions. Anyone shooting bursts within a single power-on session will usually beat the CIPA figure comfortably. Anyone leaving the camera awake between shots, reviewing images on the screen or using wireless features will fall short of it.
The same camera also has two very different ratings depending on whether you use the viewfinder or the rear screen, and the gap is large. Canon publishes figures for one recent body of approximately 340 shots through the viewfinder against 630 on the LCD. So a headline battery number without the display mode stated is not comparable with anything.
CIPA ratings say nothing about video
Video drains a battery far faster than any shot count implies, because the sensor, processor and screen run continuously rather than waking briefly per frame. Manufacturers usually publish movie runtimes separately, and some publish none at all. For video work, plan around USB power or spare batteries rather than around the stills rating.
USB-C support is worth checking individually, because charging and powering are not the same thing. Some cameras will only charge over USB with the camera switched off, some will charge while idle, and some will run continuously from an external supply while recording. Running a camera rather than merely charging it generally requires USB Power Delivery rather than simple five volt output, and manufacturers usually specify a supported adapter rather than a wattage, so a power bank that charges a phone will not necessarily run a camera.
Cold weather makes all of this worse. CIPA testing happens at 23 degrees, and manufacturers publish operating ranges that typically start around minus 10. A British winter morning will fall short of the rated figure regardless of which camera you bought, so carry spares in an inside pocket and rotate them.
One genuine DSLR advantage belongs here. An optical viewfinder consumes no power to show you an image, whereas a mirrorless camera must run its sensor and viewfinder continuously to display anything at all. That is an architectural difference rather than a matter of battery technology, and it is why DSLR shot ratings still look extraordinary next to mirrorless ones.
Memory cards
From a camera-buying point of view there are two questions: what slots does the body have, and how many. Entry and mid-range cameras generally have a single SD slot, which means they cannot back up in camera at all. Higher-end bodies typically pair one CFexpress Type B slot with one SD UHS-II slot. Canon specifies exactly that arrangement for both the EOS R5 Mark II and the EOS R6 Mark III.
The speed markings on SD cards state a minimum sustained write speed, not a peak read speed. Video Speed Class V6, V10, V30, V60 and V90 mean 6, 10, 30, 60 and 90 megabytes per second respectively, and UHS Speed Class U1 and U3 mean 10 and 30. Separately from the class, the bus sets a ceiling: UHS-I tops out near 104 megabytes per second and UHS-II near 312, and a UHS-II card in a UHS-I slot runs at UHS-I speeds. The slot in the camera, not the card, is the constraint.
CFexpress Type A and Type B are physically different and not interchangeable. Type A measures 20 by 28 millimetres and Type B 29.8 by 38.5, and Type B uses two PCIe lanes against Type A’s one, so Type B has roughly double the maximum speed at any given PCIe generation. Type C exists in the specification but the CompactFlash Association states that no cameras or cards currently use it, so it is not a buying consideration.
The arithmetic that decides your card
Divide the recording bitrate in megabits by eight to get megabytes per second. A 200Mbps Long GOP mode needs about 25MB/s, comfortably inside a V30 card. An 800Mbps All-Intra mode needs about 100MB/s, which exceeds the 90MB/s that a V90 card guarantees and therefore forces CFexpress. If you will never shoot All-Intra, you do not need a CFexpress camera.
Dual slots serve three distinct purposes and cameras normally let you choose between them: overflow, where the second card takes over when the first fills; simultaneous backup, where the same data is written to both; and separation, where stills go to one card and video to the other, or raw to one and JPEG to the other.
Mixed-type dual slots limit what backup can achieve. When one slot is CFexpress and the other SD, simultaneous mirroring is constrained by the slower card, so the camera cannot sustain its highest bitrate modes while writing to both. Anyone who needs genuine redundancy at high bitrates should look for matched slots rather than assuming two slots is two slots.
For paid work where a card failure is unrecoverable, slot count stops being a specification detail and becomes a professional requirement. It is one of the clearest lines between an enthusiast body and a working one.
Weather sealing
Read what manufacturers actually write and the picture becomes clear. Canon’s own specification wording for a recent professional body is that although the camera features dust and water resistant construction, this cannot completely prevent dust or water droplets from entering. That is not evasive, it is accurate, and almost every manufacturer says something similar.
The reason for the vagueness is structural rather than commercial. IP testing under IEC 60529 is performed on one specific configuration, and an interchangeable lens camera changes configuration every time you swap a lens, fit a hotshoe accessory or open a port door. A rating measured with one lens fitted would not describe the camera you are actually using.
OM System is the notable exception and publishes an actual IP figure, describing certain bodies as IP53 certified, splashproof and dustproof, and freezeproof to minus 10 degrees. It is worth understanding what that means. Under IEC 60529 the first digit covers solid particles, where 5 means dust protected and permits limited ingress that must not interfere with operation, while 6 means dust tight. The second digit covers liquids, where 3 is spraying water, 4 is splashing, 5 is jets and 7 and 8 cover immersion. So IP53 covers spray, and specifically does not cover jets, immersion or a pressure washer.
What sealing does not protect against
Condensation
Moving a cold camera into a warm humid room causes moisture to form on and inside the body. No gasket prevents this, because the moisture comes from air already inside the camera. Let the camera warm up inside a sealed bag instead.
Salt water and fine sand
Manufacturers do not claim protection against either, and neither should you assume it. Salt is corrosive and travels with spray, and fine sand gets into places that dust ratings were never meant to describe.
An unsealed lens
Sealing is a system property, not a body property. A sealed body with an unsealed lens is not sealed. Manufacturers designate weather resistant lenses separately, and the seal is only as good as the weakest component fitted.
User error
Canon specifies that the supplied hotshoe cover must be fitted to ensure adequate weather sealing unless a sealed accessory is in place. Open port doors, battery doors and empty card slots defeat the whole arrangement.
A warranty claim
Because almost nobody publishes a tested rating, water damage is generally assessed as accidental damage rather than as a failure to meet a stated specification. Sealing buys you resilience, not cover.
Sustained rain
For most mid-range and higher cameras with a sealed lens fitted, light rain and damp are survivable. If the camera must work in sustained rain, the only manufacturer making a testable claim is the one publishing an IP figure.
Operating temperature ranges are a more concrete and checkable claim than sealing language, and manufacturers do publish them. A stated range of minus 10 to 40 degrees is a specification you can hold someone to in a way that dust and moisture resistant construction is not.
Buying in the UK
Your strongest protection is statutory and it runs against the retailer rather than the manufacturer. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 9 requires goods to be of satisfactory quality, section 10 requires them to be fit for a particular purpose made known before purchase, and section 11 requires them to match their description. Section 22 gives a short-term right to reject running to the end of 30 days beginning the day after delivery, and after that you move to the repair or replacement remedies in section 23. Section 19 reverses the burden of proof for the first six months, so a fault appearing in that window is presumed to have been there at delivery unless the trader proves otherwise.
A manufacturer guarantee sits on top of that as an additional contractual promise. Canon, for example, states that its products are generally offered with a 24 month European Warranty System warranty covering a defined list of countries including the United Kingdom. That guarantee is separate from, and does not replace, your statutory rights.
Grey imports are stock intended for another sales region, and the risk is stated by the manufacturers themselves. Canon’s European warranty terms note that products are generally covered by a warranty applying to their specific sales region and that customers may need to return products to that region for service. The important nuance is that a grey import bought from a UK-based retailer still carries full Consumer Rights Act protection against that retailer, because statutory rights attach to the sale contract rather than to the manufacturer guarantee. What you lose is the manufacturer guarantee and convenient local service, not your consumer rights.
Manufacturer refurbished is worth a look
Canon states that its certified refurbished cameras are cleaned, repaired, performance adjusted and have parts exchanged, and that the reconditioned camera comes with a two year warranty and all accessories included. Refurbished is not automatically cheaper than new, particularly during a promotion, so price-check before assuming. Where it does work, it moves you up roughly one tier for the same money while keeping a full guarantee.
Cashback and trade-in promotions are substantial in the UK and they distort apparent pricing in three specific ways. You pay the full price up front and reclaim later, the claim window is time limited and needs proof of purchase from a participating retailer, and advertised prices are often the post-cashback figure, so two listings can look very different while describing the same deal. Live promotions in the summer of 2026 included lens cashbacks running to a couple of hundred pounds and body savings advertised at up to several hundred.
On imports, gov.uk states that goods worth 135 pounds or less are not charged customs duty unless they are excise goods, and that for goods worth more than that, VAT must be paid to the delivery company before receipt or on collection. The UK standard VAT rate is 20 per cent and applies to cameras. A price from an overseas seller that looks unusually good is often a price before VAT and handling.
The practical summary for a UK buyer: buy from a UK retailer you can go back to, keep the receipt, register the guarantee, check whether a cashback promotion is running before you commit, and treat any listing significantly below the UK market as a grey import until proved otherwise.
This section is general information about UK consumer law and is not legal advice. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 sections cited are on legislation.gov.uk, and the manufacturer warranty wording is quoted from the manufacturer’s own published terms.
Four bands, described by capability rather than by model. All figures are indicative UK levels seen in July 2026, and cashback and trade-in promotions move real prices across band boundaries, so treat these as a map rather than a price list.
Band one
Under £500
An entry-level APS-C mirrorless body, usually with a basic kit zoom at the top of the band, or an entry-level DSLR. A lens is normally included, which matters far more at this level than any specification on the box.
Single SD slot, so no in-camera backup
No in-body stabilisation
4K often cropped or capped at 30p
Little or no weather resistance
Band two
£500 to £1,000
A well-specified APS-C body, often sold with one or two lenses. This is the band most first-time buyers should be shopping in, and the one where the value is strongest.
Better subject-recognition autofocus
Uncropped or oversampled 4K on many bodies
A usable electronic viewfinder
In-body stabilisation still uncommon
Band three
£1,000 to £2,000
Where full frame becomes reachable, usually body only or as a kit at the top of the band, alongside the best APS-C bodies. This is where video specifications stop being a compromise.
In-body stabilisation, often 7 to 8.5 stops
10-bit internal recording and log profiles
Dual card slots on some bodies
Meaningful weather sealing
Band four
Above £2,000
High resolution, high speed or professional video, and at the very top, medium format. Most of what you are buying here is speed, resolution or reliability rather than better pictures in ordinary conditions.
CFexpress Type B slots
All-Intra recording at very high bitrates
Sport-specific and registered-person AF modes
The highest published stabilisation ratings
Two things cut across every band. A body-only price is not a system price, because a usable second lens typically adds several hundred pounds. And at every level the manufacturer refurbished market moves you up roughly one tier while keeping a full guarantee.
Where to go next
Our recommended cameras
This guide deliberately names no cameras, because the right one depends on the answers you have just worked through. These pages do name them, with the manufacturer’s own figures and indicative UK price bands.
The upgrade that improves a video more than any camera at the same money.
Questions buyers ask before choosing
Twelve of them, answered from published standards and manufacturer specifications rather than from received wisdom.
What camera should I buy?
The honest answer is that it depends on three things: what you will photograph or film most, how much you will carry, and what the whole system costs rather than the body. Work through the use-case section on this page, note which two or three of the technical sections matter to you, then go to the shortlist. If you want a single starting point, a well-specified APS-C body with a kit lens in the 500 to 1,000 pound band suits more people than any other answer.
Is mirrorless better than a DSLR?
For autofocus, video and the availability of new lenses, yes, and by a wide margin. DSLRs retain two genuine advantages: an optical viewfinder consumes no power, so battery ratings are dramatically higher, and entry-level bodies are cheap. But no manufacturer is developing new DSLR lenses, and DSLR video autofocus is architecturally limited because the mirror is raised during live view. Buy mirrorless if you intend to build a system.
Are DSLRs discontinued?
Not formally. No major manufacturer has issued a press release discontinuing DSLRs as a class, several bodies remained listed and purchasable new in the UK in July 2026, and Nikon has publicly stated it continues F-mount production, sales and service. Flagship DSLRs have been quietly delisted in some markets and shipment volumes are now a small fraction of mirrorless. The accurate description is a run-out category with no new development.
How many megapixels do I need?
Around 20 to 26 is more than enough for web use and prints up to A3. At the conventional 300 pixels per inch print standard, a 24 megapixel file prints roughly 51 by 34 centimetres. Higher resolution buys cropping headroom and very large prints, and costs you storage, processing time and a greater demand on your lenses and technique.
Is full frame worth the money?
It is if you need shallow depth of field at equivalent framing or the last stop or two of low-light performance, and if the budget still covers decent lenses afterwards. It is not if buying the body leaves you with one slow kit zoom. Sensor size changes total light gathered, depth of field at equivalent framing and lens size and cost. It does not change exposure, perspective or autofocus quality.
Will a modern camera stop recording after 29 minutes?
Almost certainly not. That cap came from an EU customs classification that taxed camcorders and left stills cameras duty free, and the tariff change took effect on 1 July 2019. Limits on current cameras are thermal or file-system driven, and manufacturers publish them: current figures range from one hour on small compacts to six hours on actively cooled bodies, with a few claiming unlimited recording within a stated temperature range.
Do I need in-body stabilisation?
It helps most for handheld stills in poor light and for handheld video, and it works with any lens including manual ones. If you shoot mainly in daylight, use stabilised lenses or work from a tripod, you can do without it. If you want to walk and film at the same time, either pay for it or accept that electronic stabilisation will crop into your frame to do the same job.
What is a log profile and should I use one?
Log is a recording encoding that captures a wider dynamic range in a flat, desaturated image that must be graded afterwards or have a LUT applied. It usually needs 10-bit recording to avoid banding and often raises the base ISO, which costs low-light headroom. If your workflow is cut, caption and publish, a good standard profile in 10-bit will give you a better result with less work.
Which lens mount should I choose?
Price the two or three lenses you expect to own within three years on each mount you are considering, and the answer usually appears. Sony E has the largest third-party catalogue. Canon RF is open to third parties for APS-C lenses but not for full frame, so full frame Canon means Canon glass. Nikon Z now has licensed third-party full frame options. L-mount is run as a multi-brand alliance, and Micro Four Thirds has the smallest and cheapest lenses.
How much should I budget for accessories?
Add roughly a hundred pounds for a memory card, one spare battery and something to carry the camera in, and rather more if you record video and need a microphone. None of these cameras ships with a card. The accessories that change your output most are, in order, a card fast enough for your codec, spare power, and a microphone if there is any speech in what you make.
Is it safe to buy a grey import?
It is legal, and your statutory rights against a UK retailer are unaffected because those attach to the sale contract rather than the manufacturer guarantee. What you lose is the manufacturer warranty in this region and convenient local service, because manufacturers state that warranties generally apply to the product’s intended sales region and may require return to that region. If the saving is small, it is rarely worth it.
Should I buy new, used or refurbished?
Manufacturer refurbished stock is the underrated option: inspected, repaired where needed, and sold with a full guarantee, which the used market cannot offer. Check the price against new before assuming it is cheaper, especially during a promotion. Private used purchases save the most and carry the most risk, since you have no statutory rights against a private seller for anything beyond the item matching its description.
Where this fits
This is the parent page for the whole camera section. Every shortlist links back here, and this list is all of them.
Cards, batteries, bags and everything else, with a buying order.
Still stuck between two cameras?
Tell us the two you are choosing between, what you shoot and what you already own. We will tell you which one and, more usefully, why the other one lost.
Creator Gear is reader-funded and independent. This is a Researched guide. We have not used these cameras, we do not accept payment for placement, and every figure on this page is a published standard or a manufacturer specification.