re: Mirrorless Camera

I'm a fan of the Sony A7.

I haven't looked at them since I purchased my A7S2 which has been somewhere around 8-10 yrs ago. I got it mainly because of it's low light video ability and to record my kid's high school football games. Worked great.

I would look for maybe the next version higher than mine because they really upped the photo pixels that year from the second version. If you have money then buy new, but really the old ones are great and more than enough. But I'm mainly a video person.

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If I didn't mention she primarily wants it for good photography but video is a big deal as she wants something better than her iPhone 14.

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For those applications, This will be better than an iPhone in every way. Camera phones use digital zoom technology. Real cameras use optical zoom and it makes all the difference in the world.

For those two sports, I think the cannon is a good choice. For baseball I think the little bit longer reach of the lens will be a good thing (esp. if your kid is playing in the outfield). For basketball, the Canon has a little bit better low light performance which could make a difference in a fast moving sport in a gym.

My follow up question is this, what does she want to do with the photos? Having shot (a little) sport photography since High School, my advice to her would be don't be afraid to crop in on the photos. Make the subject of the photo the subject of the photo. A 24 MP image will be approx. 4000x6000 pixels out of the camera. For a 5x7 print, you only need roughly 1500x2100 pixels. So you've got a TON of room to used in cropping. Most social media platforms crop the images down to 1080 on the long side. One caution about cropping to zoom however, as you crop in, image quality will degrade. So there is a tradeoff there. But eliminating distracting elements in the background with a crop is one of the quickest and easiest ways to improve an action photo.

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But, if she’s just looking for a mirrorless that does all the work, she’ll need more than double that budget.

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Or could buy used.

MPB Sony A6400

Sony E 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS

She definitely wants the camera doing all the work.

She has no urge in doing any editing or anything.

Well let me re-phrase. She will want the camera to do 99% of the work then ask me to take it from there. Hope that helps.