I had the wrong lenses (from 10mm up to 50mm), a 15-year-old camera, no tripod, and no plan.
Happy with the results, all things considered!

I had the wrong lenses (from 10mm up to 50mm), a 15-year-old camera, no tripod, and no plan.
Happy with the results, all things considered!
Hey thanks! The first two are shot through the eyepiece of a telescope which I did not expect to work at all
How do you shoot pictures these detailed anyway, the first, second, and third look pretty crisp.
No special trick; most of it is just âuse a camera, not a phoneâ. They were all taken with an older 10 MP DSLR and pretty-good-but-not-top-of-the-line lenses. The rest is just getting the focus and exposure right, and of course the old trick of âtake a bunch of pictures and only share the best onesâ.
Thereâs a whole photography lesson in comparing the third and fourth pictures â they were shot just seconds apart, but the different exposure decisions mean that they look entirely different from each other, and also make the fourth picture less sharp and more noisy/grainy.
Thank you for your reply, itâs very kind of you to tell me about this part of photography. May I ask what type of camera do you suggest for beginners?
Ahaha this is such a complex question. It depends on what you want to do and what your budget is.
I got into photography around 2000 and for years the approach I recommended was: buy a cheap point-and-shoot, and upgrade when you got to the point that you were confident your equipment was limiting you. Modern smartphones are weirdly both better and worse than old point-and-shoots but the principle is still the same: most of photography is the artistry and composition and developing your eye, not the technical aspect. Use the phone thatâs in your pocket and learn to look critically at your pictures and figure out why some work and some donât. Read Photography And The Art Of Seeing by Freeman Patterson. Take photos mindfully, not just snapping away.
But.
Eventually youâre likely going to hit the technical and artistic limitations inherent in a smartphone and youâll want something that is both technically superior, and that has settings you can control. At that pointâŚyou can go for a pocket camera, they still exist but are expensive, or you can buy a cheap (second-hand?) interchangeable-lens camera, whether thatâs a DSLR like a Canon Rebel or a mirrorless camera or whatever. I donât know the current market tbh, but if you can swap lenses then itâs going to be a âtechnical enoughâ camera for you to learn the technical side of photography and have more artistic freedom and take higher-fidelity pictures.
Fair warning though, going down that road is expensive. A bargain lens is $100. Youâll quickly hear people talking about a lens being a great deal at âonlyâ $500. I have one lens that was around $1,000, and, yes, it was also described as âinexpensiveâ compared to other similar lenses. I love it, but, gosh, I wouldnât spend that money that easily nowadays.
Or. Or. Or. you could just not. Get some other camera! Something not as âsmartâ as a phone camera, thatâs trying to emulate a fancy camera. Get a thrift store digicam from 2002. Get a Game Boy Camera. Get anything, and learn it and love it and lean into its strengths and weaknesses, and take pictures and make art!