Laptop? SLR?

Good morning all together, in search of a new hobby I came across photography and since I have no idea about technology I'm looking for help, I need the two things that are above, I can spend about 1200 euro, do not have to be professional equipment but even better than the stuff with which you just take pictures on vacation.

So of course I can recommend you two devices for 1200 euro, but that will not help.

Therefore, first of all. What should the laptop be used for?

Photography is a great hobby, but you have to deal first with the technique and theory. A cell phone usually makes better pictures than a SLR, if you only use the automatic mode. Therefore only read in / watch tutorials and then grow a camera. Likewise, you should or should have set yourself in any case with the post-processing. A cell phone always optimizes each image directly, but with a real camera this is not the case.

A good camera no longer costs the world, but the lenses are usually more expensive than the camera body. If the camera should be light, then rather a DSLM comes into question, but that one should have had everything in the hand once. (Media Markt, Saturn, …)

As long as terms like shutter speed, aperture, ISO, etc. Do not tell you exactly, then you better stay with the smartphone, otherwise you will hardly draw benefits from a camera.

But do not worry, you can do it relatively quickly, and you learn the rest through practice.

Before you spend money on cameras (no matter which one) you should inform yourself (camera technology, basics of photography, image design) and as long as you inform yourself you should take pictures with your smartphone. You will also get to know your needs better, based on what I like to photograph.

Why such a silly tip? Because you can quickly spend thousands of dollars on camera and lenses without having found the right camera for you.

To take a good picture, it depends on two conditions:

1) Picture design! If you photograph an uninteresting subject from an unfavorable perspective and add something disturbing in the background, even the best and most expensive camera in the world can't take a picture in this situation that appeals to the viewer. The first step is therefore to have or to look for good motives, to deal with image design, line management, perspective, the wise choice of a small image detail and so on. You can just as well with a cell phone camera.

2) Technology / Equipment. Again, even the best and most expensive camera in the world can only be as good as the one that serves them. The more design possibilities the camera offers (for example aperture / depth of field), the more one can also make mistakes if one does not know it.
If you only want to use the automatic, you probably have the most pleasure on a cell phone camera. If you want to study the technology and design options that a camera offers - from the aperture setting to RAW development - then I recommend the Panasonic Lumix FZ1000 "all-round camera".

Laptop:

If you really want to do image editing, maybe even RAW development, I advise against a laptop. For image editing, you depend on seeing the colors as they really are. If the display shows you the colors wrong, this can only give you bad surprises at the end of the photo print. A good monitor on the PC is therefore much better suited. Keywords for searching for an image editing monitor are "color space", "color fidelity", "viewing angle stability" and "calibrate".

No matter if you bring a laptop or PC with monitor. Both screens should be calibrated. Such a calibration device you get used quite cheap. I would rather not get a mirror reflex, especially not for holidays. Then rather a more compact mirrorless.

Calibrating the laptop will only work if the display is correct. Otherwise, the picture appears brighter or darker depending on the angle of inclination, with the TN panel sometimes totally distorted in terms of color.