The Buyers guide to...Best affordable camera for landscape photography

The Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV isn’t much bigger than some compact cameras with much smaller sensors yet it’s much more versatile, has a great collection of features and produces better image quality.

Inside the Olympus E-M10 IV is a 20-megapixel sensor and the company’s TruePic VIII processing engine. Together, these combine to enable an extended sensitivity range of ISO 80-25,600, the native range is ISO 200-6,400.

Olympus has given the E-M10 IV in-body image stabilisation (IBIS) which is claimed to enable images to be captured at up to 4.5EV slower shutter speeds than normal. This system also operates in video mode and it can be augmented with digital stabilisation but using it results in a slight crop in the frame.

Olympus cameras have some great advanced-shooting options, but novice photographers can sometimes struggle to find them. With this in mind and like its predecessor, the OM-D E-M10 IV has an Advanced Photo Mode (AP) setting on its mode dial.

This is used to access Live Composite, Live Time, Multiple Exposure, HDR Backlight, Silent, Panorama, Keystone Compensation, AE bracketing, AE bracketing shooting mode. Live Composite and Live Time mode are particularly noteworthy as they take the guesswork out of long exposure photography by enabling you to see the image build up on the back of the camera.

Overall, the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV captures a good level of detail and we were very impressed at how well it reproduces colours. The Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV makes a very good first serious camera and it’s capable of achieving good results in a wide number of subjects and conditions.

You can find the best deals on the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV at Amazon UK and Amazon US.

Read our Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV Review

Panasonic designed the Lumix G100 as an entry-level vlogging camera but it also makes a good camera for beginner photographers and anyone looking for an affordable camera that can produce great images.

It has a bigger sensor than competing cameras like the Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III and Sony ZV-1 and benefits from accepting interchangeable lenses, which makes it a bit more versatile. As it’s a Micro Four Thirds camera, the G100 can also accept any of the now huge range of Micro Four Thirds lenses from Panasonic, Olympus and others.

Landscape photographers will appreciate the 3,480,000-dot electronic viewfinder built-in. That’s really useful when the sun is shining on the screen on the back of the camera. It makes it much easier to assess exposure and colour as well as composition.

Overall image quality is great, with images looking noise-free with fine details captured up to ISO 3200, from our tests.

You can find the best deals on the Panasonic G100 at Amazon UK and Amazon US.

Read our Panasonic Lumix G100 Review

The Canon EOS Rebel T8i / EOS 850D is an attractive sub-£850/$750 DSLR that make a nice budget camera option. Wile its build is plasticky, it’s nevertheless lightweight and easy to carry with a good control arrangement and excellent touch-control. It also delivers very nice images with a good level of detail in a wide range of conditions.

Inside the Canon 850D/8Ti is an APS-C format CMOS sensor with 24.1-million effective pixels. As Canon has used its Dual Pixel CMOS AF design for this sensor, the camera uses phase detection focusing in live view and video mode as well as when the optical viewfinder is used to compose images.

In live view mode there are up to 143 autofocus (AF) points available for selection. If you swap to composing the image in the viewfinder, there are just 45 points, but they are all cross-type with lenses that have a maximum aperture of at least f/5.6, which means they are more sensitive than the standard linear type.

Canon has paired the 8Ti/850D’s sensor with the Digic 8 processing engine. For stills, this combination enables a standard sensitivity range of ISO 100-25,600, which can be expanded to ISO 51,200.

Overall, this might be the best affordable camera for landscape photography you can buy today.

You can find the best deals on the EOS Rebel T8i / EOS 850D at Amazon UK and Amazon US.

Read our Canon EOS Rebel T8i / EOS 850D Review

While the Nikon D3500 is now listed as discontinued, no successor has been announced and it can still be found on sale.

Inside the D3500’s monocoque body is an APS-C (DX) format sensor with 24.2 million effective pixels. This is paired with an Expeed 4 processing engine and its a combination that’s capable of delivering excellent-quality images.

With just 11 individually selectable points, the D3500 AF system’s specification may seem unimpressive next that of the average mirrorless camera, but it’s fast and capable of getting moving subjects sharp.

As it’s a DSLR, the D3500 has an optical viewfinder so you see a natural view of the scene with no interpretation by the camera. There’s also a fixed 3-inch screen with 921,000 dots on the back of the camera which can be used to compose images in Live View mode (as well as review them), but the Live View autofocus system is quite sluggish.

One of the main selling points of the Nikon 3500 for beginners is its excellent Guide Mode that teaches the user about photography and the camera controls using non-techy language.

Read our Nikon D3500 Review

The X-A7 sits at the bottom of Fujifilm’s range as its most entry-level camera, but it punches well above its weight. It’s a stylish camera with great build quality, offering a mode dial on its top-plate and dual adjustment dials. There’s also a clever ‘Smart Menu’ that makes adjusting some of the key parameters.

Inside the X-A7 is a 24.2-megapixel APS-C format sensor that delivers improved noise control at higher sensitivities thanks to copper wiring in the sensor that provides faster data readout.

In our tests, the Fujifilm X-A7 controls noise well for much of its ISO range. The colours and contrast that Fujifilm cameras capture in their various Film Simulation modes is on wonderful display here, and you’ll get some beautiful landscape scenes with this camera.

Entry-level cameras like this one aren’t supposed to have every feature currently available. They are supposed to be an affordable introduction to photography. They should enable you to capture nice images, better than you can get from a phone, and fire your interest in capturing the world around you. In this regard, the X-A7 succeeds at all levels.

You can find the best deals on the Fujifilm X-A7 at Amazon UK and Amazon US.

Read our Fujifilm X-A7 Review

Aimed at beginner photographers, the Sony A6100 offers plenty of room to grow. Its impressive feature set nearly matches the fellow APS-C format Sony A6600.

Like its sibling, it boasts internal 4K movie recording in Super 35mm format with full pixel readout without pixel binning, to capture approximately 2.4x the amount of information required for 4K movies. Budding videographers will also appreciate the integrated microphone input and built-in interval shooting.

Again, like the A6600, the A6100 incorporates a 24.2MP Exmor CMOS image sensor, the latest BIONZ X image processor and a front-end LSI. AF acquisition is lightning fast at 0.02secs via its 425 phase-detection AF points covering approximately 84% of the image area and 425 contrast-detection AF points.

Sony’s Real-time Tracking and Real-time Eye AF modes are also on-board, delivering faster and more accurate AF performance when photographing humans and animals.