I’m looking for an amateur (≤ €500) digital camera for my dad. The main issue I’d like to alleviate is the slow autofocus on his current one. On his (and my very old, very cheap camera), the autofocus takes about a second, sometimes even more to find the right focal length. He laments that he’s unable to take a quick snapshot of a fleeting moment due to this.
I initially hoped I would find some metrics on this in cameras’ technical specifications. But so far, none have turned up. Guides often critique or praise the autofocus feature, but don’t provide a sense of how quickly the lenses adjust, either.
This leads me to these questions I now put to you to judge: Am I naive to expect a single number to adequately represent the amount of time the autofocus needs to focus? What contributing factors would render such a metric irrepresentative, if it existed?
I’m not trying to be annoying, but the The Canon EOS 800D is €849 and the 850D is €929 with the cheapest objective. I don’t think that to be in the same price range as €500. (I’m aware you can spend thousands upon thousands on cameras, where a €400 gap is virtually insignificant.)
True. I was honestly unaware they were still that expensive but they’ve actually seem to have gone up in price recently (probably because of “inflation”). I’m also always looking at body only prices because I have a bunch of lenses already (stay away from the cheap kit lenses, they usually, not always, have the slower AF drives)
Still, with 500€ you’ll probably get a good camera. Best way to find out if it’s a good fit is always going to an actual store and just trying out different models. If you’re not locked in a system already.