A couple of friends, strangers, and blog readers have recently asked me for advice about buying cameras. Unfortunately, I actually know very little about non professional model cameras. But, I do know about cameras generally, so here’s some advice.

General Thoughts

• You don’t need a million megapixels. Anywhere from 5 – 10 will be fine – anything else is a feature you’re paying for you won’t need. It’s fine if the camera has more megapixels than that, just don’t let a sales person get you to buy a more expensive model because it has more megapixels.
• Weather sealing is very, very very important.
• Canon and Nikon are essentially the same and put out identical products. Which one most photographers use is usually based on which one their first photo teacher told them to buy. My first photo teacher happened to be sponsored by Canon, so I use Canon. So I don’t use it because it’s better than Nikon, just because I started with it. However, that means all subsequent advice is related to canon models because that’s what I know.

SLR vs point and shoot

• At this point, there are now point and shoot cameras that have the same optical abilities as SLRs. The two models I would recommend looking at are theCanon s90 and the Canon G11 (again with Canon caveat in mind). They do absolutely everything that a basic entry level SLR will do EXCEPT change lenses. So, unless you plan to change lenses often or extensively make use of aperture and shutter speed controls manually, these cameras are really really great and will make excellent images.
• The entry level SLR that is most similar to the s90 or the G11 but will have the ability to switch lenses and give you better manual controls is the Canon Rebel. There are a bunch of different models of the Rebel, and they’re all basically the same. It’s a very good camera and will do everything you need – I got started on this model and even started selling images made with this camera in 2007 before upgrading.
• After that, if you want something fancier, models like the Canon 7d are neat because they will also do video, though the audio quality is poor.
• As far as I can tell, the Canon 50d and Canon Rebel are very similar cameras with different price tags. They have the exact same size image sensors, the same number of auto focus points, etc. The Canon 5d has more ISO expansion than the rebel, but that’s not necessarily a good thing if you don’t know how to use it sparingly. I’d say if you want something more than the Rebel, save your money and jump from the Rebel to the 5d or the 7d.

Lenses – if you do go the SLR route

• The 50 mm fixed 1.8 or 1.4 lenses are awesome and run about $100 and $350 respectively. Much better investment than bulky cameras. They are harder to use than zoom lenses but create really great, crisp images where you can have small parts selectively in focus. They also force you as a photographer to work harder, which always results in better images.
• Other than that lens, you might want something that covers the range of about 24 mm – 70 mm or 100 mm at most. Unless you’re doing breaking news or photos in violent situations, you will never need more zoom than that. Wildlife photography usually involves a zoom of at least 200 – 300 mm.
• Make sure you buy a UV filter to protect your lens from dust and scratches.
• Don’t buy a polarizing filter. Good camera salesmen will try and get you to buy these when you say you’re going to Africa (“It’s so sunny!”) but they’re actually horrible because they reduce detail in the shadow areas, which means in black people’s faces too.
• Use a small paint brush or soft bristled tooth brush to clean your camera.
• I also really like disposable lens cleaning tissues because then I don’t worry about cleaning my lens with an already dirty cloth. Also great for keeping my glasses clean.
• Always keep your lens hood on. This is important not just to avoid sun spots in your image, but also because if you bump into something (or someone bumps into you) they hit your cheap and easily replaceable plastic lens hood and not your lens. Especially in situations where you have limited personal space or things are moving quickly, this is incredibly important.

The final thing is that which camera you buy is about a million times LESS important than how you use it. And I’m not just talking about perfect exposure here – I mean getting up close to people and not being nervous about asking for their images. It also means moving around a lot and finding unique angles rather than shooting from eye level. And the best thing that you can do to make great images is shoot with great light – early morning and late afternoon only. I don’t even bother taking photos outdoors from about 10 am – 3 pm for the most part if there’s an option not to.

So, readers, what kind of cameras do you use? Are you happy with them? Leave your tips and recommendations in the comments section.

Last week, I got an email from Benjamin Chesterton of duckrabbit asking my opinion of a post he’d written on the ethics involved in a series of photos by Italian photographer Marco Vernaschi of child sacrifice in Uganda supported by the Pulitzer Center.

(Full disclosure: I was the recipent of funding from the Pultizer Center along with Jina Moore in 2009.)

Before I even clicked on the link, I knew which photos he was talking about. I’d seen them, months earlier, and they struck me as somewhat off. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, but the dark and eerie photos didn’t look anything like the country I’d lived in for two years. I was in Uganda in January when I saw them and put up this tweet:

The blogosphere has plenty of opinions and posts about the controversy. See here, or here, or here, or here, or any of a dozen other places, including responses from the Pulitzer Center director Jon Sawyer and the photographer himself.

A quick summary of the controversy: photographer exhumes small girl murdered for sacrificial purposes to take photos of her body, then gives her family money, then clearly changes his story more than once and makes people suspect every “fact” in the situation may not be so “factual.”

First, kudos to Benjamin for bringing all of this to light. Second, I’m glad to see photographers and others who have opinions on something other than photoshop manipulation, which has always seemed beside the point to me.

Third, it’s clear that regardless of the specifics, Marco has made some dubious decisions. I think that’s something you can see in his photos, and perhaps why I felt some much discomfort when I first viewed them – not because he was uncovering something shocking, but because something was wrong. I’ve always said that how you take a photo affects how the photo looks.

Finally, I don’t like Marco’s photos because they don’t tell me anything I don’t know. They only make me think about him, and what he did to get into the particular situation that resulted in the photo.

Here’s the photo on the homepage of his website. It doesn’t tell me anything about the world or the people in the image, it just makes me think why on earth did that dude and those two women let him stand above him while they were having a sexual encounter? And what did Marco say to get them to agree to this? It’s voyeurism - nothing more.

Marco’s actions were clearly unethical. But enough has been said about that already that I don’t feel the need to say more here. Instead, I’d like to end with a word about a photographer’s approach. Did he have the best of intentions? Perhaps. But did he have his subjects’ best interests as his primary priority? No. He says he exhumed the body so that he could expose a wide spread problem. But had he instead respected the needs of the people with whom he was interacting, that respect would show in the photograph and ultimately it would do far more to promote discussion on the issue of child sacrifice than his sensationalist photographs manage to do. All his photographs manage to do is promote discussions about him.

Check out this great music video by Maurice Kirya called Boda-Boda, Kampala’s fastest form of transport. (HT to Roving Bandit.) The female love interest in the video is played by an albino. A friend in Cameroon once told me that no Cameroonian band is complete without a token albino, something I didn’t quite believe until I visited her and saw Yaounde’s albino Michael Jackson impersonator.

So, my question is this: how many bands/music videos in Africa feature albinos? Is this one,two, trend? Or just one club in Yaounde and one youtube video?

Readers, let me know what you think and add links in the comments section!

Security outside President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s office.

From the SL archive. For more of this lovely diva named Davida, see the audio slideshow I did for BBC last year, Making Music in Freetown.

In the 1970s and 1980s, so many promises were made to Liberia and by Liberians. All of them would be broken over the next two decades. As part of a long term project I’m beginning, I plan to document the spaces of these broken promises. A couple of weeks back I posted about the Ministry of Defense, the first part of this series.

The Ducor Hotel was once a four star resort with a French restaurant and rooftop bar. The hotel promised to bring tourists and revenue to Liberia. Perched atop the highest hill in Monrovia, the view is breathtaking and the traces of grandeur are evident. During the war, the hotel became home to hundreds of squatters who left rural areas thinking Monrovia might be a bit safer. But war followed them to Monrovia.

After the war, many stayed until they were forcibly evicted a couple of years ago.

Now, the word on the street is that some Libyan investors have purchased the hotel and plan to renovate. Depending who you ask, they’ve been held up either because of the squatters still living in the area or because from the hotel, you can see straight into the American Embassy’s new compound.

The people living there just wait for life to make another decision for them. And until then, Nigerian peace keepers, former hotel employees, and a mishmash of other people call the Ducor home.

I don’t usually give shout outs to charitable causes on my blog, but some things are worth mentioning. HT to Chris Blattman.