Hoooooooo boy, talk about my professional wheelhouse.

From the heart, my greatest piece of advice is

It really doesnt matter what gear you choose.

At it’s simpliest, a camera is a dark box with glass sticking out one end. What’s really important is at two ends of the camera is the glass and opposite that the sensor (or film). Sensors are fixed to the camera, so yeah, you’d think that’s important, but cameras have been very good for so long now that the incremental improvements dont matter too much to a beginner. If you want to scan over images at 1200% zoom to find defect in the image, you’re kinda not at a beginner level, or you’re after the absolute, critically sharpest images you can stand to make. Personally that’s not an interesting photography to me, so i offer no advice to that.

With that in mind, the critical differences between brands dont make a difference to my photography, so invest in what ever camera system that strikes even your most shallow of fancies. If there is a deliberate choice to make, as said in this thread, make a choice of focal lengths for the lens.

Focal length can best be thought of as zoom, or magnification. It’s based on fancy math, but the higher the number, the more “zoom”.

But if you want to start, find a lens for your chosen camera, assuming it’s interchangeable, at either 35mm or 50mm equivalent focal lengths. I say equivalent, because lower end cameras (still good btw) have smaller sensors than many professional cameras, sized at what’s refered to as APS-C sized vs “Full Frame” of professional bodies. The only real effect that will have for you now, is that it means there’s a 1.6 crop (or zoom if you will) to your image, since the lens is designed to fill the full frame with light.

If you want to understand that, imagine an image projected on a wall, if you take a regular sheet of paper against that projected image, and trace it, that’s basically photography. If you take another sheet of paper, tear it into quarters, then trace it against the wall like the first paper, you’ll see a demonstration of what’s happening. The smaller page cant fit as much as the larger page. That’s it. It’s a smaller sensor that fits less of the whole image over all, resulting in a “zoom”.

If you grab an APS-C sensor equipped camera, and use a 35mm lens, the results are close to a 50mm lens on a fullframe, but a 50mm lens on that APS-C camera results in an image like an 80mm lens on a full frame.

Even cheap lenses are good, unless they’ve been destroyed. What you do is always more important than what you have. What you have can only help.

You’ll need to learn what shutter speed controls, what aperture controls, what ISO controls.

Shutter Speed is a time measurement in 1/x of a second. Designed so that going down to a faster speed results in 1/2 the light of the previous setting, and going up to a slower speed provides 2x the light.

Aperture is the hole of the lens. The aperture is controllable, from f2.8 > f4 > f5.6 > f8 > f11 > f16 etc and these units are mathematical. The difference between them is the same as with shutter speeds. The lower the number, the more light. Higher, less. The next higher f stop (as they’re called) allows half the light of the previous, and the next lower is 2x the light.

Finally ISO is sensitivity of the sensor or film to light. Range is from 100 > 200 > 400 > 800 > 1600 etc. This is based on ISO standards to light sensitivity. As with all the others going up is more sensitive by 2x, down 1/2 less.

Photographers call these differences of half or double by stops. It’s a logarithmic scale. The key is learning the balance to get a good exposure, then understanding the effect of choosing one of the 3 to control the light.

The point is either Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Fuji, Leica, or Sony, theres not going to be a dramatic effect to your beginner work. Or even pro. But the camera HAS to encourage you to use it IMO. Ergonomics factor big for me. To that end, i use Canon bodies. But they’re not the only ones. I have a sony a6000 i hate, i have a Ricoh GRii I love to pieces. But you have to learn your chosen gear.