Hi everyone! I’ve been working on “bestof”, a huge list of the “best” things in every category.
I came to the conclusion of these picks using both online reviews (both videos and articles) as well as online consensus in various different forums. A lot of them probably aren’t very good, please lmk if my picks are terrible! I want to eventually turn this into a really useful source for people looking to buy X thing.
Please let me know if you have any questions or if there’s any alterations I should make to my picks! Also, I would like feedback on how to improve the site as a whole!
improvements that others have suggested already:
- higher contrast colour palette
- What colour schemes do you think would fit this? I still want there to be a pop of colour, but right now it is very low-contrast
- more information on WHY I picked the things I did
- p.s. How should I go about this? Should it be a note at the bottom, a link, a tooltip, or something else?
anyways here’s the link: https://swarbler.github.io/bestof/camera-gear/camera-gear/
Note that for the camera section, I’ve split it into different sections based on FF, APS-C, and M43, with subcategories for the different brands. Each brand has their own merits to their cameras. Should I add that to the site?
I do think that I should add in Olympus (or are they OM-System now?) cameras soon, but which ones are good options? Is the OM-3 any good? How about older models? I’ve heard that the OM-1 mark one is good value.
Big question: why should anyone use your lists rather than a random specialist magazine/website’s “Best of 2025”? Or even just poking Amazon driven by Star ratings and skimming reviews. And more serious personal research is usually going to pay off for the buyer.
Since by the sounds of it, you have personally not even tried out most of the things you recommend, it makes it an even bigger question of why use your list?
Lesser question: looking at your list of lenses, your photography interests are showing, or more precisely, it’s pretty obvious you are not into wildlife photography from the focal length ranges you are choosing. As a general point, if your lists are driven by purposes, you should make the purposes explicit.
Observation: buying used, without the gear being backed by informed guarantees, is a fast way to heart break
This list originally was intended for myself when I first created it, but it slowly grew and I decided to show it off to the public because I thought it could be helpful.
Most of my “picks” are sourced from online reviews and forums. I would definitely not use this list as the sole source of a purchase, you shouldn’t do that with any source and it’s better to look at other reviews as well.
Yes, I should probably include some wildlife photography lenses in there. What are some good options? Also yeah you’re right, a lot of my picks are probably biased towards my own preferences, and I should really mention that, probably at the top.
Thanks so much for the feedback, I really appreciate it!
Ah, that’s a good attitude.
On wildlife lenses - I only know the Canon RF range and on Full Frame cameras, and even there I don’t know both sides of an interesting debate: there’s an RF100-400mm lens I’ve never used, but because its zoom it gives users more options (e.g. mixing wildlife with other photography without lens changes) and 400mm is enough for a lot of wildlife. On the other hand, the RF600mm F11 lens has distinctly more reach, and I know its good for birds, having used it a lot for that. However, a Prime Lens with fixed aperture has its own limits.
I currently use the RF200-800mm - which I really like but is very expensive and heavy so hardly a sensible recommendation for your list to make - learn via the above two. You can see what it achieves in my posts over on the !birding group (and indeed, pretty much the above discussion of lens).
update: I’ve pushed the changes, you should be able to see them now!
okay, I’ve added supertelephoto lenses to my list, once I get back to my computer I’ll push the changes!
