If I were starting my photography journey all over again with a limited budget, this is the equipment I’d personally buy.
Everything on this list would be second-hand/used, because you can often get far more for your money compared with buying new. Many reputable second-hand camera dealers also offer at least a one-year warranty, giving you some extra peace of mind while keeping the overall cost down.
You absolutely don’t need to spend thousands to get started — with a sensible choice of used equipment, around £100 can get you surprisingly far. 📸
My £100 Beginner Camera Setup — What I’d Buy
The total cost of this setup, including postage, was just £104.
The camera is a Nikon D60, which is now around 17 years old, paired with a Tamron 18–200mm lens. On the D60’s APS-C (cropped) sensor, that gives you an equivalent field of view of roughly 27–300mm in full-frame terms.
That’s a pretty impressive range from a single lens. You’ve got everything from reasonably wide-angle shots right through to a useful telephoto reach, without needing to carry a bag full of lenses.
For me, that makes this combination particularly useful as a go-to press camera. It’s capable of producing images that are more than good enough for newsworthy photographs, while being small and inexpensive enough that I can throw it in my camera bag without constantly worrying about it.
And let’s be honest — when the entire setup cost only £104, I’m going to be a lot less heartbroken if it gets knocked about, scratched or, heaven forbid, dropped and broken!
It may be an old camera, but that doesn’t mean it’s useless. In fact, this is exactly the sort of setup I’d recommend to someone who wants to get into photography without spending a fortune.
£104 for a camera and lens that can cover an enormous range of photographic situations?
I’d call that a pretty good starting point. 📸
Edited slightly.
Tamron 18-200mm at 18mm
Tamron 18-200mm at 200mm
Close-up details on the light.
Overall, I’m very happy with this setup. The only downsides are that the D60 struggles with ISO above 400, and it can only handle SD cards up to 32GB. If my budget were higher, the main things I’d change would be upgrading to a Tamron 18–270mm lens and getting a better camera body, such as a D90 or something from the D7000 series. That said, once you start making those upgrades, the total cost would be considerably higher than what I paid for this setup.
