Other brands of camera gear can do the job, but Nikon and Canon are the top of the line leaders.
Between those two, Nikon has always had a slight advantage over Canon when shooting with
film and Canon has always had a slight advantage over Nikon when shooting digital photos.
However, the difference is negligible and either brand will be more than up to the task. If you
already have lenses and so on – stick with the brand of camera you have been using.
Pixel Count
A good quality photo sensor will make your life much easier!
If your goal is to make pictures that can be viewed on your cell phone or on the viewing screen at
the back of your camera, any pixel count will do. But, keep in mind that you cannot enlarge them
without severely degrading the image quality. If you want a picture that can printed large enough
to hang on the wall, (16 x 20 or larger) you will want to have a sensor with a larger number of
megapixels. I’m told that 25 megapixels is about equivalent to film.
Shoot In Raw format
As far as your camera settings go, always shoot in RAW format. Not JPEG. There are some real
advantages to shooting in raw format...
Shooting in RAW format will gather a lot more visual information than JPEG (which loses quite
a bit) and is more amenable to manipulation with photo editing software. For example, you could
change the white balance after the fact without any loss of image quality. It is just like it would
be if you had properly set the white balance before shooting.
Other “fixes” helped by shooting in RAW... You could change the photos’ exposure and
contrast levels as well as having total control over the amount of sharpening you want to apply.
And on and on. This isn’t an editing software tutorial so I will leave it there – but shooting in
RAW is always your best choice. Yes, I know it uses up more memory but, the tradeoff is worth
it.
When editing, you can always cut out something you don’t want in the finished photo, but it’s
difficult if not impossible to add detail after the fact. It’s always better to get as much data as
possible - in the camera - vs. having to spend hour after hour in front of your computer trying to
“fix” it later. Do your best to get it right – in the camera.