New on Should You Buy This Camera

Six months of nightly observations. Across 222 cameras and lenses MPB listed in both May and October, asking prices fell a median 3.5%. Sony dropped 8%, Olympus was the only brand to rise, DSLRs held flat, and on a typical October night eBay had the cheapest copy of a camera more often than any dealer.

The Canon PowerShot Pro1 is a 2004 bridge camera with an 8MP CCD and the only L-series lens Canon ever put on a PowerShot. It's slow to write RAW, the autofocus hunts in low light, and ISO 400 is the ceiling, but it makes fun photographs and feels built like a tool. I paid about $60 for mine on eBay and would do it again.

I accidentally bought a Four Thirds lens that would not fit my Micro Four Thirds Olympus E-PM1, and chasing that mistake led me to the Panasonic Lumix DMC-L1. It is chunky, slow and a joy to shoot, and the photos it makes when conditions line up are some of my favorites. I got mine with a lens for about $335 and thought that was great.

The fixed-lens catalog had the LX5 but not the LX3, the G16 but none of the G10 through G15, the RX1R but not the RX1, and the D-Lux 8 with none of the lineage behind it. All 61 are in, from the 2005 LX1 to the Ricoh GR IV, with typical-used figures on the older ones where a launch price would only mislead.

Cameras too old for the used market to stock, like the Olympus E-300 and the Panasonic DMC-L1, now carry a curated typical-used figure instead of a meaningless launch price. A real listing replaces it the moment one appears.

New name, same nightly price tracking. The old one described a shelf; this one describes the question people actually arrive with.

Mount pages filter by category and sort by price or release date, sensor pages narrow to one format, and both keep the state in the URL so a filtered view is shareable.

Adapters are now a first-class accessory category with tracked used prices, so the cost of putting old glass on a new body sits alongside the bodies and lenses.

What a bridge camera actually trades away for that zoom range, the two sensor tiers worth knowing about, and where the reach-per-dollar math gets absurd.

Why some old point-and-shoots cost more than their launch price, which compacts the hype tax skipped, and the best used compacts under $600.

The used cameras that can keep up with children: fast autofocus, silent shutters, and prices that survive contact with family life.

Picked by weight, reach, and how likely you are to actually carry them.

Four ways to shoot a camera before you own it: borrow from a local camera group, use a manufacturer trial like Panasonic's LUMIX program, rent from a rental house, or buy eBay Certified Refurbished with honest returns.

Five used starter kits from about $230 to $700, each one a body plus a lens, with used prices tracked nightly.

What matters in a used video camera and what doesn't, criterion by criterion.

Twelve street cameras worth buying used, from the cult bodies with a premium to the older ones that dodge it. Prices update nightly.

What matters in a street camera, which models cost more used than new, and the cheap ways in.

I borrowed the G9 II for two weeks through Panasonic's Lumix rental program and it reset my sense of what a modern camera can do. The phase-detect autofocus got me my first bird photos, the Leica 12-60mm it came with handled low light I'd have skipped with my Canon 80D, and it fit my hand better than any body I've held. A deal on an OM-1 got my money, but the G9 II stays on my tracked list. I may switch back when prices align. Or I will just have two, competitive MFT bodies (don’t tell my wife).

I bought the LX10 new in 2020 for around $300 and barely used what it could do. When I came back to photography in 2026 it became the camera I actually carried: the f/1.4 lens handles low light, the stabilization holds, and the focus modes turned out to matter. It held my everyday slot until an older Olympus took over.