Proposed "soft-landing" for "what camera" questions.

Question

This is building on an idea from this discussion about equipment recommendations. The idea is that we'd have a "soft landing" post which "I am new; what camera should I buy?" questions could be marked as duplicates of.

The idea is that while many equipment recommendation questions are great for the site, new user camera recommendations tend to be particularly problematic (see the link above for reasoning). The proposal is to make a community wiki post which would provide helpful general information and pointers to other Photo-SE questions that cover the topic.

We've got What are considerations when choosing a DSLR brand?, How much do lens lineups vary across DSLR platforms?, Are there disadvantages to a prosumer camera for a beginner, aside from cost?, and some other great questions with great answers, but new users aren't finding these. And the good ones are all one step narrower in specificity, so the new questions can't fairly be marked as duplicates of one of them.

Closing everyone's vague question as off-topic or "not a real question" seems harsh and unfriendly. Might this be the better solution? Here's what I'm proposing:

I am new to photography: what should I buy, and what do I need to learn?

I am new to photography. I have taken pictures before, of course, but nothing serious. Now I want to get more serious. I'm not turning professional or anything, but I want a good camera. What should I buy?

Do I need a dSLR or a compact camera? What about those new mirrorless cameras?

What brand should I pick?

What about zoom? How do I know what lenses to get?

What resources are there for learning about my new camera once I get it?

How do I learn about the basics of photography?

Where do I get more help?

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This is a community wiki question intended as a welcoming spot for new users. Each answer should cover one topic, either one of the above or some other fundamental concept. And each answer should be a pointer to another specific question (or set of questions) on this site, not new information.

What do you think?

Answer 1

This seems almost anti-stackexchange to me. We're supposed to be providing experts to useful, specific questions. Throwing them a general "soft landing" isn't too much different than just throwing them back into the wild of the internet to me. We've already closed several questions before for being too general in their asking - but now we're purposing a super general question will solve the problem?

I'd rather see us provide more of a suggestion of "these are the questions we need answers to in order to help you out". Stuff like (for cameras):

• What's your skill level?
• What's your budget?
• Do you have an investment in any particular brand already?
• What's your intended use?
• ....some more

This gives us a stable, valid platform to provide useful information to the asker. I think we're alot more likely to turn visitors into useful members if we provide a more useful answer and teach them that there are "factors" to consider like those questions rather than just shooting from the hip.

Answer 2

I am seeing a general theme here. If we are going to answer the new photographer question - we really want to ask them the same things a good salesmen would ask.

• What are your primary uses for the equipment
• What did you have before and what did you like or dislike
• What is your budget(not something a good salesmen will flat out ask, but applicable here)
• What are your goals aspirations in photography
• Does size matter to you
• Would you want to purchase and carry additional lenses to get the best quality

Answer 3

I guess I just don't understand why we don't deal with each question as it comes. Some users are going to ask "correctly", and some users are going to ask "incorrectly". It doesn't matter how much meta-information we have for them to read, how thorough our tag wikis are, whether we have a "form" for them to fill out or not. Some just won't "ask correctly"...because they don't care, because they found our site and simply clicked "Ask Question", because they are seeding their question on 50 different sites trying to get as much information as they possibly can, etc.

We can try to formalize the "process" as much as we want, but it ultimately won't change the status quo. Some people are intelligent enough to know that they need to be specific when they ask for help, and others are either dumb or too sloppy to realize that being more precise and specific is in their own interest. I DON'T want to make equipment recommendations off-topic, since they are a critical element of photography, particularly for new entrants into the field. They are our largest traffic driver, and could very well be the primary factor on our (Photo-SE's) long-term success. Our response to people who DO come here initially with an equipment recommendation seems to play a fairly significant role in determining whether they stick around and become a regular member, or decide were a bunch if dicks who can't simply HELP and take a ride to the nearest site that WILL answer their question.

Dealing with the crappy equipment recommendations, and closing them when they are clearly "not a real question" due to lack of specificity or interest from the OP, is simply part of the territory. We should deal with them on a per-case basis. I have already updated the equipment-recommendation tag wiki to clarify what we see as an acceptable type of eq. req. question, and what kind of specificity we need. We can always direct people to the wiki in the event that they do not provide the specificity we need to provide a proper answer...but we WILL most likely have to post a few comments on "bad" eq. req. questions when they occur to get more info, because reading the FAQ and examining all the tag wikis is most definitely not what every new user does before asking a question...they simply (and quite appropriately) just ask.

Answer 4

Okay, so, after some discussion in chat, what I'd like to propose is:

Next time a question comes in like this, tag it "camera-recommendation" (currently a non-existing tag), and populate the tag wiki with the "landing" information I'm suggesting (similar to the suggested text in the quote block above, but with links to the relevant existing questions), plus some tips on specific details that might be helpful.

Then, someone would very nicely post a comment saying welcome and pointing to that.

I'm still concerned about issues beyond vagueness, but maybe we should start with this and see where that goes, and deal with those things if they become problems.