Three core questions decide almost every camera purchase, and I wish someone had told me that before I spent years buying the wrong thing. I once sold a perfectly good setup to fund a bigger body, and within a month I was shooting less because the new gear was heavier and I kept leaving it home. The photographs didn't improve. The gear got nicer and the cameras stayed in the cabinet. So start here and answer honestly.
Answer These Three Questions First
What do you want to shoot? Landscapes need wide angles and high resolution. Sports and wildlife need burst speed and telephoto reach. Portraits need good skin tone reproduction and shallow depth of field. Video demands strong stabilization and autofocus. What's your budget? Decide the total for body plus at least one lens, not the body alone, because a body with no good lens is a paperweight. How much weight will you actually carry? A camera you bring every day is infinitely better than a flagship sitting in a dry cabinet. In humid Shenzhen a dry cabinet is genuinely useful for storage, but a camera that only ever sits in one is a waste of money — the whole point is to have it on your shoulder when the light turns. If a rig weighs more than about a kilogram and a half, I stop reaching for it, and I suspect most people are the same.
Lenses Over Bodies — The Money Test
On the "full-frame obsession": APS-C sensors handle the vast majority of shooting scenarios. Even pros struggle to tell the difference in good light. Spend the extra money on better glass — lenses impact image quality far more than bodies. This is the single most useful rule I know. A cheap body with a good lens will beat an expensive body with a kit zoom almost every time, because glass controls sharpness, contrast, and how pleasingly the background falls out of focus. The Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM, used around three hundred dollars, is the best portrait lens most people will ever need; the 50mm f/1.8 STM at about a hundred and twenty dollars is the best value in photography, full stop. Meanwhile the EF 17-40mm f/4L, which I've shot thousands of frames on, is a great wide zoom but soft in the corners wide open — a real trade-off you only notice after you buy it. The EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM is superb for wildlife and weighs about a pound and a half more than the camera itself; on a long hike it makes you want a monopod, and that's the honest cost of reach.
How I'd Spend a Given Budget
If money is tight, I'd buy a used APS-C body and put the budget into glass. A used Canon EOS Rebel T3i runs about a hundred and fifty dollars and pairs beautifully with the 50mm f/1.8; a Nikon D3100 or D3200 sit in the same range and are more than enough to learn on. Around the two-hundred-fifty-to-three-fifty mark, the Sony Alpha A6000 remains a steal — small, fast autofocus, and light enough that you'll actually carry it, which matters more than any spec sheet. If you can stretch to a used full frame, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II hovered around four hundred dollars for years and is still a beautiful portrait and travel camera; the 5D Mark III, more like seven to nine hundred used, buys you far better autofocus and high-ISO, which is exactly what my night work around Futian CBD needed. Notice that in every tier the lens is where the image quality comes from, and the body is mostly about autofocus, burst rate, and low-light noise.
The Full-Frame Question
Full frame helps in three real places: low light, shallow depth of field, and wide-angle field of view. If you shoot none of those, you're paying for weight and cost with no benefit. APS-C bodies actually gain you something in return — the roughly 1.6x crop factor turns a 100-400mm into an effective 160-640mm reach, which is a genuine advantage for birds and wildlife. The "more megapixels is better" idea is mostly a myth too; my old 12-megapixel D3100 made lovely prints, and pushing resolution higher mainly punishes you with bigger files and more demanding technique. Buy the sensor size and pixel count that match your subjects, and refuse to pay for headline numbers you'll never use.
Buying Used Without Getting Burned
Almost all my gear is used, and the savings paid for better glass. But you have to check. Ask for the shutter count — a body rated for a hundred and fifty thousand clicks with eighty thousand on it is a fine buy, one near its limit is not. Look at the sensor with a bright light and a phone flashlight at a small aperture: dust spots you can clean, but deep scratches or fungus in a lens are walk-away problems. Turn the focus ring slowly and feel for grit, check the mount for wobble, and shoot a frame at every aperture to make sure the diaphragm blades move freely. Buy from a seller who shows real sample photos, and if you can, pay a little more for a return window. A returned lens is cheaper than a bad lens. I'd rather buy a used 85mm f/1.8 in good condition than a brand-new slow zoom.
The best gear is the one you know well enough to operate with your eyes closed.
So the strategy is boring and it works: decide your subjects, set your total budget, prioritize the lens, choose the smallest body that does the job, and buy it used and carefully. Then go shoot with it until the camera disappears from your hands — because familiarity, not specifications, is what actually shows up in the pictures.