Fri Sep 22, 2017 8:28 pm
Outdated? Don't fall for the hype. A 2017 camera may be 2% better than a 2016 camera that may be 3% better than a 2015 camera at the consumer level. They have to keep bringing out new cameras to keep the money coming in, just like all the mobile phone companies do with their annual model changes. You may see bigger improvements at the pro/advanced amateur level of camera, but they come out every 3 or 4 years, if not more.
There may be a 50% difference in the capabilities of different photographers and their abilities to take photos using the best settings in the best light..... i.e. the person pressing the buttons has a much bigger impact on the photo than the camera itself.
Newer cameras tend to have more bells and whistles whereas the primary functions and capabilities see minor improvements - improved sensor, maybe, better low light performance, perhaps. Otherwise, pretty much all the consumer level cameras will take pretty much the same photo under the same conditions, unless you are particularly obsessive and look for faults and differences at the pixel level.
For many photographers the 20 or 25 megapixel capabilities are beyond what's needed (your computer monitor is around 1 megapixel, in round terms, as a comparison). Photos are resized for sending round the family or for printing on 5x7 or 4x6 prints or compressed for social media, all of which tend to reduce the impact of the camera quality.
So, in reality, it won't really matter which camera you get, and as you say, the lens quality is more important, though many consumer lenses are very good these days. The usual mantra is to get the cheapest body and most expensive lens you can afford....... however you will need to be aware that if you go with Canon, the EF-S lenses are not compatible with full frame EF bodies and EF lenses may have lower quality on a cropped sensor body than they do on a full frame body (but that's just physics) and in a side by side comparison EF-S lenses can have similar quality, or even outperform, some EF lenses on crop sensor bodies (though you tend to be in the territory of the obsessive for this to be important).
Apologies if this has made thing more confusing, but it has to be said that, really, there aren't any bad cameras and the differences between them are quite marginal these days. If you know what you are doing any camera can give great pictures.