Obviously you won’t get far in photography without having the necessary kit – but which type of camera is best for portrait photography? There’s more to it than just having a high count of megapixels – unless you’re printing out huge enlargements of an image to go on the wall, a lot of the pixel detail will go to waste anyway. Instead, look for sensor size, lens quality and the ability to have full control over the camera’s settings.
Once you commit to a brand’s camera system – whether Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Sony, Pentax or a less well-known name – you are tied in to their stock of lenses and accessories, so make your decision with the full range of equipment in mind. Having said this, there are adapters you can get that enable some mixing and matching between brands, and there are other third party manufacturers like Tamron and Sigma who offer a number of Nikon- and Canon-compatible lenses.
On the whole, however, you are making a long-term commitment to a particular brand of camera system, so go in-store to try them out. Pick up all of the different cameras which fall within your price bracket, note how they feel in your hands and try taking a few test shots. Choose the one that makes you want to go straight out and shoot. Bear in mind that while prices may be cheaper online, if you buy your kit from a store then you have somewhere to go if it breaks.
There are two very different camera types for serious portrait photographers to choose from:
Mirror-less Interchangeable Lens Camera (MILC)
MILCs are smaller than DSLRs because they don’t use an internal mirror to reflect the scene up into the viewfinder. Instead, the scene is shown on an electronic display on the back of the camera. This can cause a slight lag compared to DSLRs, which show a live view.
The lack of a mirror in MILCs, however, allows the lenses to sit much closer to the sensor, which means that lenses don’t have to be as large as those on DSLRs to let an equivalent amount of light through. With smaller camera bodies and smaller lenses, MILCs are far more portable than enthusiast- and pro-level DSLRs, yet often have image sensors of comparable size and output quality to DSLRs. As the lenses are interchangeable in MILCs, you can buy a range of different types for different shooting situations.
MILCs have a quieter operation than DSLRs, and their more discreet profile makes them well-suited to street photography or candid portraiture, where the appearance of a DSLR may attract too much attention.
As MILCs are a relatively new breed of camera, current body and lens choices are much more restricted than for DSLRs, although if you already have a lot of DSLR lenses, you can get an adaptor which enables you to use them on some types of MILC, too. In addition, as the technology is less developed than that for DSLRs,…