Anyone telling you a round head has higher ‘quality’ or softer light is at least kind enough to out themselves as an idiot, though.

Ah, photographers.

What are you looking to shoot? Lighting is very different for wildlife, for landscapes, for portraits, and for pets, for instance.

Peter Coulson has a great series on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqcD8Gayn2I

On one hand I’m grateful for the YT gear reviews, as when new kit comes out it’s good to know the ins and outs. There are several reviewers that I trust, such as Gerald Undone.

But if I’m not in the market for new gear, those YTers aren’t very useful.

Many of them have said, yeah, we do gear reviews. Yeah we do clickbait titles… but that’s what works. People want gear reviews, if you use clickbait more people will watch. If you’re trying to make a living off of YT that makes sense for them to follow that.

There are YTers that don’t really do gear reviews (or don’t do many) that I really enjoy.

Peter Coulson is one. He’s an Aussie and he has a great series on how he coaches models, how he does lighting, etc. I like his style.

Grainy Days is another one. I love his dead-pan delivery and self deprecation. He takes photography seriously without taking himself seriously, which I appreciate.

Mike Gray does a lot of portrait/editorial style work.

It’s a very, very old CCD sensor (15+ years), so that might be the best you can get. I looked at a few SX110 photos in Flickr and it’s about the same.

I would lean into it. There’s a small but enthusiastic niche of photography with these older CCD sensors and the character they bring.

If you want tack sharpness, that standard will usually be set by the latest and greatest. If you want character, older is sometimes better.

Sadly, you’re unlikely to find two lenses for RF mounts for $300 or less. It’s a relatively new mount and Canon hasn’t allowed any third party manufacturers so far.

You’ll want to get an EF to RF adapter, which is going to eat up about $100 of that budget. Then you can get some EF or EF-S glass, which has a much more robust used market.

A good all around lens is a 28mm F1.8, which will be about 35mm on an APS-C camera. That’s a good all around focal length to get started with I think. Any zooms that are f2.8 are probably going to cost a lot, and the kit zooms are pretty slow (f5.6-6.0) which may not be a good idea.