Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/jamstack-tools-services-apis/?utm_source=rss

We’ve explained the Jamstack, a popular new way to build secure, scalable, high-performance sites. Now we’ll introduce you to the tools, services, and APIs that power Jamstack sites.

The A in Jamstack stands for API. APIs can do anything for you, from sending a form to authenticating a user, or from storing and retrieving data in real time to shopping for products.

In this article, we’ll do an extensive review of existing APIs and how they compare to one another. This review couldn’t possibly encompass the whole spectrum of third-party APIs that you can integrate into your website, but hopefully you’ll still find the coverage enlightening enough.

We’ll use the words “headless”, “detached”, and “serverless” a lot in this article. If you haven’t already, check out our introduction to the Jamstack, which covers all the basics.

Hosting (Mostly for Free)

Provided: Netlify

Hosting a Jamstack site usually involves automated deployment pipelines. For example, you might have a repository in GitHub which, on every push, automatically triggers an online deployment (via webhooks), running the necessary build tools (such as Jekyll) and regression tests (via Travis CI).

Sound difficult? It can be a surprisingly simple process!

Most of the services here include these goodies out of the box:

SSD drives
CDN deployments
free SSL (including for custom domains)
command line deployments and rollbacks

Note: look out for another article in this series, coming soon, covering how to use these services.

Services
Google Firebase and AWS Amplify

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Firebase Hosting is Google’s take on a hosting service that’s easy to understand and implement, and it’s free to use (limits apply). Firebase’s backbone actually lies on top of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and you can in fact access and tweak some Firebase deployments through the GCP console. But by implementing something of an “gateway” (Firebase) that transparently handles GCP resources for us, Google gave developers a brand new and highly improved user experience (UX) … and the Firebase’s YouTube channel is just brilliant! ?

AWS Amplify is also an effort to reduce the complexities of Amazon Web Services (AWS) for web and mobile deployment that doesn’t quite offer free hosting but 12 months of free use for new accounts for its Storage with Amplify as part of the AWS Free Tier.

Google really made a brilliant move with the Firebase family of products by “detaching” them from the GCP, but Amazon went half-way with AWS Amplify. It sure is a dramatic improvement from the regular AWS workflow, especially for novice users, and its documentation hub is superb and way more down-to-earth than the way Amazon usually documents services. But Amplify is still accessed from the same old (horrifically bloated) console. You still need a credit card to just open an account, deployments are still region-specific (no built-in CDN, seriously?), and the workflow isn’t as straightforward when compared to that of Firebase or Netlify.

GitHub Pages and GitLab Pages

Both hosting services for Git repositories also have a built-in service to host static pages right out of your codebases, 100% free: GitHub Pages and GitLab Pages.

In a future article we’ll cover how to use these services, but in the meantime make sure to check out these easy-to-follow guides:

Getting Started with GitHub Pages
Hosting on GitLab.com with GitLab Pages

Netlify and Heroku

In a very short period of time, Netlify not only coined the Jamstack term but also positioned itself as the place to go for all things static. While you could certainly accomplish more with an elaborated AWS pipeline, the simplicity and unparalleled ease of use that Netlify offers is unbeatable. Want to host a static site? Just drop it here and it’s online. Want automatic updates? Link a repo and just push a commit. And batteries are included — instant builds, worldwide CDN, free SSL, CLI tool, on-click rollbacks, and more.

Heroku is the only service in this list that allows you to host dynamic pages: Node.js, Ruby, Python, Java, PHP, Go, Scala and Clojure (check their Language Support page). So if you aren’t yet quite ready to go static, this might be a good way to test your dynamic sites online for free.

Other Services

With 194 data centers as of 2020, Cloudflare is — by many metrics — the company that offers the lowest latency for their DNS and CDN services around the world. They serve big companies but also have a number of services oriented to developers, like Workers Sites. The service isn’t free ($5/mo minimum charge) but it’s as top performant as you can get, and fairly easy to use.

Other tools targeted at static pages include Aerobatic, which offers a free trial with no credit card required and support for internationalization (i18n) and full-text search built-in plugins; Surge.sh with npm run scripts and CI services; and Vercel (formerly ZEIT Now) with an Edge Network serving big names such as Twilio and The Washington Post.

Comparison

Service
Free plan
Easy-of-use
Tooling

Aerobatic
1 month
easy
good

Firebase Hosting
yes
easy
very good

GitHub Pages
completely free
easy
poor

GitLab Pages
completely free
easy
good

Heroku
yes
somewhat easy
very good

Netlify
yes
extremely easy
very good

Storage with Amplify
1-year (new accounts)
somewhat easy
very good

Surge.sh
yes
easy
good

Vercel
yes
easy
good

Workers Sites
no
somewhat easy
good

Storing and Retrieving Data: Real-time NoSQL Databases

NoSQL solutions like MongoDB have been coexisting with relational databases like MySQL for some time (see the differences and how to choose), but real-time processing takes NoSQL to the next level by enabling cloud storage for state management, such as a user entering their name or clicking a radio button.

If you’re familiar with Redux and Vuex — React and Vue.js libraries for state management, respectively — think of integrating that concept with a cloud storage provider.

Services

Amazon DynamoDB is a “fully managed, multiregion, multimaster, durable database with built-in security, backup and restore, and in-memory caching for internet-scale applications”. But as with many things AWS, it’s difficult to implement and very hard to debug (see Why Amazon DynamoDB isn’t for everyone, by Forrest Brazeal). In all fairness to Amazon, they also built DataStore into AWS Amplify (with GraphQL and REST API support) with a more straightforward approach, in line with the simplicity of the rest of Amplify’s products.

Google Firestore made real-time NoSQL databases — a fairly complex topic in and of itself — as simple as they can be, with pretty much all the capabilities DynamoDB has. It’s very well documented (with introductory clips that are fun to watch). And React and Vue.js have wrappers around Firestore with react-redux-firebase and Vuexfire, respectively.

Cloudflare sure knows how to take performance to the very extreme, and Workers KV, a serverless key-value storage for applications, is a fine example of what a well engineered product looks like. The premise of Workers KV is that you can access a key as if it were a local file within your app, and the content will be the value stored for that key. That’s it — no API to implement, no extra coding. And because of the unbeatable performance of the Cloudflare CDN, this approach can actually be faster than querying a NoSQL database. And as simple as it is, it scales seamlessly to millions of requests. ?

And finally, there’s FaunaDB, a startup that crafted a solution with native GraphQL and a simple pricing (including a free plan) that can be implemented in minutes.

Managing Content: Headless CMS

In the “monolithic” way of doing things, whenever we used a given content management system — such as WordPress, Django, or Joomla! — it meant that we also needed to use the front-end engine that came attached to it, as back and front end were “coupled” components of a single piece of software (see our introduction to the Jamstack for more info about tightly vs loosely coupled sites).

Enter the headless CMS — a back end only without a front end. Since a headless CMS would normally expose an API or generate static content in the way of Markdown or HTML files, the front end can be anywhere really. In fact, multiple and simultaneous interfaces can be created for web sites, mobile apps, and Internet of Things (IoT) apps.

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Products and Services

There are a number of headless CMSs, both as software you can download and configure where you do the deployments yourself, or offered in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model where everything is taken care of for you.

Some features you can expect to find:

localization (l10n) and internationalization (i18n)
microservices architecture with a RESTful API
editor interface
customization
versioning*

* Since some headless CMS will integrate smoothly with your git repo, the versioning capability can actually be a remarkable improvement over a regular CMS.

Self-hosted Headless CMS

Ghost, “the #1 open source headless Node.js CMS”, is certainly the one with the most stars on GitHub. Not only can Ghost handle content, but it also offers a number of integrations to manage payments (Stripe), email lists (MailChimp), shopping (Shopify), and many more. And then there’s Ghost(Pro), which is the official managed hosting for Ghost with commercial support.

Fairly close to Ghost in popularity comes Strapi, with REST and GraphQL APIs, and 1-click deployments on Heroku, AWS, and DigitalOcean. It has “starters” (template projects) to work seamlessly with Gatsby, Vue.js with Nuxt.js, React with Next.js, and Angular. It also runs on Node.js and has support for a number of database engines.

Netlify CMS is also a popular option built as a single–page React app. There’s Directus, which wraps custom SQL databases with an API and provides an intuitive admin app to manage its content, and the commercial companion Directus Cloud. There’s also TinaCMS, which is also React-based, and Ponzu, Copckpit, and many more, which you can explore oin the comprehensive list provided by headlesscms.org.

SaaS Headless CMS

CloudCannon is the cloud CMS for Jekyll (we’ll review Jekyll later in the “static site generators” section), with smooth integration with GitHub, Bitbucket and Dropbox. They have a free plan as well but with no global CDN hosting.

Contentful is something different: a content hub where business owners, marketers, developers and project managers can all go to set and manage all of the data sources of an organization. And their headless CMS is just a part of that strategy. The Contentful platform is fully featured, very well documented, with plenty of open-source tools. And while the pricing is a bit confusing, there’s actually a free plan that only requires attribution.

There are other SaaS headless CMSs with free plans, such as DatoCMS and Sanity with a proposition similar to that of Contentful; Forestry, with support for a number of static generators; GraphCMS, with GraphQL support; and Prismic. These are just a few of the many options.

Sending Information: Forms without Code

Sending data through forms has forever been one of the main uses for server-side processing. There are essentially two approaches to addressing this problem on a static site, each with pros and cons.

From Builders, Embedded and Hosted Forms

Many times integrating a “powered by” external form is more than enough to collect email addresses or to receive feedback.

Google Forms have offered this possibility since 2008 entirely for free, with a simple interface that stores submissions on Google Sheets, and that can send alerts via email every time there’s a submission.

Formstack takes forms to another level by providing an integrated workflow supporting digital signatures, document generation, Salesforce integration, and more. They offer a free tryout but no free plans.

Then you have the extremely easy-to-use form builders JotForm and Wufoo, which integrate handling payments, among other things, or Typeform, which makes forms and surveys … pretty? All of them offer free plans.

External API: Form Processing as a Service (FPaaS)

Sometimes a builder won’t cut it, as you need more flexibility to present information and fields, or to fully integrate the look and feel of the form with the rest of your website. For this you will need to integrate an API.

The way these services work is surprisingly easy: you specify a URL for submission that will do the processing for you. At most you’ll have to set a few things up but most probably won’t need to do any extra coding.

There are a number of providers offering free plans, such as Form.IO, Formcarry, Formspark, and Netlify Forms. They all work in a similar way and are very easy to implement.

FormDen and FormKeep are also form builders that can otherwise be used just as back ends, though none of them offer free plans.

Programming Server-Side Logic: Function as a Service (FaaS)

Couldn’t find an API that does quite what you want? Create it! You don’t need to resort back to a hosted back-end system to process server-side logic, with all the hassle that comes with it (maintenance, bills, credentials, security patches). Instead, you can implement a micro-service in your language of choice (oftentimes JavaScript, Python, or Go), encapsulate that logic into functions, and offer them through a RESTful API.

As with pretty much everything else in this list, you won’t be paying anything for a function that’s not being actively used, so no worries for just leaving it sitting there (but beware that spikes in traffic might also trigger extra billing).

Providers

While the implementation details for AWS Lambda, Azure Functions and Google Cloud Functions may differ, they all work in pretty much the same fashion and you’ll need a degree of familiarity with AWS, Azure or GCP. AWS Lambda has the richest language support of them all (and also Amazon API Gateway to help you wrap your functions into a maintainable API with monitoring tools), while Azure — not surprisingly — has the best support for .NET Framework and .NET Core (with different versions supporting different runtimes and even TypeScript transpiled to JavaScript). But be aware that Azure systematically ranks as the slowest service by a margin.

Cloud Functions for Firebase and Netlify Functions are wrappers around Google Cloud Functions and AWS Lambda, respectively. They greatly simplify the management of functions on the cloud, as you effectively can get away without even having an account on such services. Code deployment and versioning become trivial with Netlify — which also has very good community support — as it will smoothly integrate with your repo offering stage, previewing, and rolling back at a click (or a commit). Simplicity naturally comes at the expense of losing some flexibility (see Firebase Cloud Functions: the great, the meh, and the ugly by Pier Bover).

IBM Cloud Functions (based on Apache OpenWhisk) and Cloudflare Workers are other services you might want to look at. IBM has an impressive list of supported languages, including the option to deploy Docker containers with your own runtime. However, it ranked somewhat poorly performance wise. And just as Netlify systematically manages to make things the simplest, Cloudflare again makes things the fastest (and by a difference).

Comparison

service
languages
overhead*
coldstart*
difficulty
support

AWS Lambda
C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, PowerShell, Python, Ruby
86 ms ?
589 ms
high
? very good

Azure Functions
C#, F#, Java, JavaScript and TypeScript, PowerShell, Python
760 ms ?
5,907 ms ?
high
? very poor

Cloud Functions for Firebase
JavaScript and TypeScript
642 ms ?
168 ms
low
? very good

Cloudflare Workers
JavaScript, COBOL
70 ms ?
76 ms ?
intermediate
intermediate

Google Cloud Functions
Go, Java, Node.js, Python
642 ms ?
168 ms
high
? very good

IBM Cloud Functions
.C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Swift, and Docker containers
136 ms
2,103 ms ?
high
no info

Netlify Functions
Go, Node.js
86 ms ?
589 ms
very low
? very good

* As measured by λ Serverless Benchmark, the overhead is the time from request to response without the time the function took (for a concurrency of 50), and the coldstart is how long the servers takes to respond when queried are spanned every 3 hours; the lower the values, the better.

Authenticating Users: Identity as a Service

Identity as a Service (IDaaS), also called sometimes Authentication as a Service (AaaS), involves managing a full user registration, confirmation, and authentication with just APIs. The Geist of “stateless authentication” is that a user will authenticate against a third-party and come back to you with a valid “token” that you can verify, or revoke if need be.

In some cases, a provider might even offer a “drop-in” user interface (UI) that will work seamlessly across desktop and mobile, all of which could potentially save you very long hours of work.

Services

Auth0 has been in business the longest and has quickstart guides for a number of scenarios. It’s an excellent provider if you want to implement a complex solution and already have some experience implementing authentication. But as they point out, “identity is complex, deal with it”. The large scope Auth0 services (universal login, single sign on (SSO), multifactor authentication, branch password detection, and so on) can be overwhelming if you’re just starting on the topic.

Firebase Authentication (with its ready-to-use UI) and Authentication with Amplify are also very comprehensive and flexible, and somewhat presented in a more straightforward manner than Auth0. Firebase also offers anonymous authentication! Curious? Check out this clip:

Once again, Netlify seems to come up with the easiest solution to implement with Netlify Identity and its open-source zero config netlify-identity-widget to create a secure login in 10 minutes! But of course, there are some limitations (check out Four Dealbreakers in Netlify Identity, by Jean Cochrane).

You can also check Okta, FusionAuth and LoginRadius, all of which have free plans. There are no freebies for Ping Identity, OneLogin, and Ubisecure, which are more oriented to the enterprise sector. Finally, consider Cloudflare Access, as everything Cloudflare does is rock solid.

Going F·A·S·T: Static Site Generators (SSG)

I can hear some of you saying “all of this might be okay for future projects, but my sites are already dynamic, so what to do?” Here’s when static site generators enter the picture.

You can have the best of both worlds — the convenience of a familiar CMS and static pages with code and data splitting, preloading, caching, image optimization, and all sorts of performance enhancements. An SSR will bridge that gap by querying your database and generating static output out of it (for example, Markdown pages), and with some settings to set your template, you’ll be all set.

The listing here is tiny compared to the ever increasing list of SSRs. Have a look at StaticGen for more info.

Main Products

GatsbyJS is powered by React.js and webpack, meaning that it can generate progressive web apps (aka PWAs, websites that look and feel like an apps). It also supports GraphQL (see Write Apps with Better Building Blocks) and it has +1,000 plugins to get data from anywhere (WordPress, Drupal, Contentful, GraphCMS, DatoCMS, and many more). See how GatsbyJS says it compares to its main competitors, Hugo and Jekyll.

All of this flexibility comes at a cost, as setting and customizing GatsbyJS can be a time-consuming process, and if you don’t have a decent understanding of React — and therefore JavaScript — you won’t be able to make much of it. That’s where Gatsby Cloud comes in, offering support to build and maintain Gatsby sites for free or for a fee, where you could automate your fast builds, access to previews, generate daily edits, and fire deployments with ease to Netlify, Cloudflare, AWS CloudFront or Akamai.

Hugo claims to be “the world’s fastest framework for building websites”, and it sure can generate massive sites in milliseconds. With built-in templates (literally hundreds of them available) and native support for internationalization (i18n), it’s also one of the most popular SSGs. Hugo is a Go app, and while Go isn’t hard to set and learn, you’ll definitely need to be checking the documentation often if you aren’t familiar with it.

Unlike GatsbyJS, configuring and deploying Jekyll is a rather straightforward process. Furthermore, Jekyll is the only SSR supported by GitHub Pages (Tom Preston-Werner, creator of Jekyll, is also a co-founder of GitHub), and can smoothly deploy static sites for free right out of your GitHub repos! Jekyll uses Shopify’s Liquid template language, which is also easy to learn. The downsides? As a Ruby app, Jekyll can be hard to set on a Windows environment, and optimizations such as minimizing JavaScript code and image preloading aren’t included by default. In fact, Jekyll doesn’t even aim at generating a PWA but just purely static sites — which might still be fine depending on what you need.

Comparison

Product
Language
Templating
Setting
GitHub stars

GatsbyJS
JavaScript
React.js
difficult

Hugo
Go
Go (library)
intermediate

Jekyll
Ruby
Liquid
easy

Others

WP2Static is an SSR designed specifically for WordPress (WP). It has a small but very interesting set of plugins, like Algolia search, and Cloudflare Workers and Netlify deployments. HardyPress is actually a SaaS solution to generate static WP sites, and for a fee you’ll have an admin panel from where you can enter some credentials to access your online WP installations to manage everything: shut down live WP installs that were already imported, transparent deployment to global a CDN, HTTPS, forms, search. Other WP-related SSGs with commercial support are Shifter, Strattic, and Sitesauce.

Since I am admittedly biased towards Vue.js, I had to include VuePress, which is intended to generate single page applications (SPAs) and has a minimal setup with markdown-centered files, and it’s also powered by webpack. Gridsome and Nuxt.js are more featured Vue.js powered frameworks with SSR capabilities.

Selling and Processing Payments: Headless Shopping Carts

The architecture and benefits of headless ecommerce is not that different from that of a headless CMS: massive cost reduction (hosting, licenses, maintenance), less time to market, seamless integration, and — a big one for commerce — “omnichannel” capabilities.

Continue reading
100 Jamstack Tools, APIs & Services to Power Your Sites
on SitePoint.

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2020/07/popular-design-news-of-the-week-july-20-2020-july-26-2020/

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

4 Design Patterns that Violate “Back” Button Expectations

We Designed Something that Couldn’t Work

Appydev – Best Hand Picked Tools

Dark Mode for all the Things

15 Amazing Lego Re-Imagined Star Wars Scenes

37 SEO Tips all Web Designers Should Know

Medium is not the Home for your Ideas

How to Start Designing in Figma

Recursive Google Font

8 Popular UI Design Trends on Dribbble in 2020

Teenyicons — Tiny Minimal 1px Icons

Stripe: Building a Developer Cult

Fast Design will Kill your Product

How to Create a Strong Visual Identity for Digital Products

How to Create a Responsive Timeline with Image Thumbnails

Reploy – Instant, Shareable Previews of your Product

Wavium – Start a Blog and Newsletter in Under 5 Minutes

Can a Rebranding Make BMW Immune?

Webwaste

9 Epic Logo Designs Inspired by Famous Fictional Places

Create a Stunning Infographic with these 9 Tips and Tricks

How to Create a Web Design Portfolio with no Job Experience

5 Essential UX Design Principles that Great Designers Embrace

I Don’t Want to Be a Founder and I Don’t Think You do Either

Stop Worrying About People Stealing your Ideas

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/nugt27eZSlI/best-cameras-for-beginners

The best camera for beginners allow creatives to expand their skills in all sorts of ways. You might be looking to add photography to the services you offer your clients, or find a stylish new way to show off your portfolio. Maybe you want to start vlogging to take your followers behind the scenes of your work – or, hey, perhaps you just want your Insta to pop a little more. There's no shame in that.

Whatever the reason you want to take more pictures, it's best to pick up one of the best cameras for beginners rather than relying on your smartphone. This is because there are certain advantages to cameras that mean they'll always outpace even the latest, most sophisticated smartphone cameras. For more details, jump to what to consider when buying a camera section. 

If you've already got some photography skills, check our our roundup of what we consider the best cameras for all levels to be. And while you're getting kitted out, why not explore our guides to the best memory cards and the best camera bags too.

All of the cameras we've selected for this guide are suited to photography novices, while still offering the capacity to grow with you as you improve. Let's get started.

The best cameras for beginners available now

It’s particularly easy to get up and running with the Nikon D3500. As well as an ‘intelligent’ fully automatic mode, there are wide-ranging scene modes and effects to choose from. More uniquely, there’s a Guide shooting mode, which serves as a kind of interactive photography course. There’s no shortage of quality either, with a high-performance 24.2MP image sensor and processor, a generous ISO (sensitivity) range, speedy 5fps maximum burst rate and a high-resolution LCD screen. 

However, it’s not a touch-sensitive screen and lacks a tilt or pivot facility. Another drawback is that autofocus is relatively slow in live view and movie capture modes but, overall, the D3500 is currently the most appealing beginners’ camera on the market.

The Canon EOS 250D is the first entry-level DSLR to feature 4K movie capture, and it replaces the popular EOS 200D in Canon’s lineup. Indeed, the Dual Pixel CMOS autofocus system for live view and movie modes, inherited from its predecessor, makes the camera particularly good for tracking action when shooting video. The virtually silent autofocus performance of the 18-55mm kit lens is a further bonus.

Not just for video, the 250D is a very accomplished package for stills. It's beginner-friendly with optional Guided User Interface and Creative Assist modes, which work seamlessly with the fully articulated touchscreen. The camera is also well able to grow with you as you learn new skills and techniques, Canon’s excellent Quick menu giving intuitive and instant access to important settings.

One of the most compact and lightweight DSLRs on the market, the 250D is a camera you can take anywhere and everywhere. Our only real criticism is that, in viewfinder-based stills shooting rather than live view mode, the autofocus system is fairly basic. There are only nine AF points and only one of them is cross-type, able to resolve detail in both horizontal and vertical planes.

Fujifilm's mirrorless cameras not only look fantastic, with cool retro styling that has been a hit with photographers for going on a decade now, but they're also some of the best shooters on the market. The Fujifilm X-T200 is one of the newer models, designed for entry-level users who want room to grow their skills and shoot high-quality images and videos. Its upgraded sensor produces a wide dynamic range and pleasingly low noise, and this combines well with Fuji's Film Simulation modes to produce images with real pop.

The X-T200 shoots 4K video in impressive quality, and its articulated touchscreen allows you to get creative with your shooting angles. Having access to the stable of pin-sharp Fujifilm X-mount lenses is also no bad thing, and ensures you'll have plenty of room to grow and explore in your shooting, whatever direction you take it in.

Don't be fooled by the slim dimensions of this compact camera: it's actually an impressive stills-and-video shooting machine, with not only the ability to shoot high-quality Full HD and 4K video, but also to directly livestream it online. Indeed, you might be surprised how many YouTube creators you enjoy shoot a lot of their stuff on the Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III; it's a popular camera for a reason.

The fast 24-100mm equivalent lens gives you an enormous amount of shooting versatility; no matter the lighting conditions, no matter how distant the subject, you'll probably be able to have a decent crack at capturing it. Video features are also further bolstered by such vital extras as an external mic port, ensuring that your videos will sound as good as they look. The camera feels premium in the hand, and with the LCD that flips around 180 degrees for easy monitoring, you've got a capable machine in all categories.

The best cameras don't have to be digital! Analogue is a great Physical prints of photographs have much more tangible lasting value than digital files, and there's loads of potential for incorporating them into your creative projects. The Polaroid Originals OneStep+ is the best instant-print camera around right now – not only does it produce beautiful square prints in that classic Polaroid style, but it also offers Bluetooth connectivity with a smartphone that give the user access to loads of additional shooting modes like Double Exposure, Light Painting, Noise Trigger and more.

Full of retro charm, the OneStep+ is well-designed and easy to use, with a powerful flash and twin lenses, one for general shooting, the other for portraits and close-ups. It's great value at the price, though bear in mind that film is an ongoing expense, coming in packs of ten that will generally set you back £10-15. Buy in bulk if you can and you'll definitely make some savings.

There have been plenty more cameras released in Sony's a6000 series since this one, so why have we included it? Well, this is a still a fantastic machine in its own right: a fast-shooting, lightweight and dependable mirrorless camera, with an APS-C sensor and a sophisticated autofocus system. A beginning photographer who wants a solid foundation on which to grow and develop their skills will find the a6000 offers all of this and more. Plus, with all the subsequent models that have been released, this camera can now be picked up for an absolute bargain price.

Equipped with a powerful 24.3 APS-C sensor, the Sony a6000 is an E-mount camera, meaning there's a fantastic range of lenses to choose from in addition to the bundled 16-50mm kit lens. This is an ideal choice for those who want to hit the ground running; it doesn't have as many guide modes as other cameras, but if you're prepared to put a little work in, you'll find it to be a rewarding and capable imaging machine.

One of the upsides of Micro Four Thirds mirrorless system cameras is that they tend to be fairly small and lightweight. That’s certainly true of the Olympus E-M10, which is now in its third generation. Although small, it’s impeccably well built and beautifully turned out with classic retro styling. The 14-42mm EZ kit lens is similarly small, with a retractable design that enables compact stowage. 

Even so, it features a built-in motor that enables smooth zooming during video capture. The maximum burst rate for stills is a speedy 8.6fps, although autofocus can be a little slower than in many competing cameras, making it tricky to follow fast-moving action. 4k UHD movie capture is a bonus.

Great for following the action in sports and wildlife photography, the Nikon D5600 has an advanced 39-point autofocus system that boasts auto-area, dynamic-area and 3D-tracking modes. The optional 18-140mm VR kit lens is also particularly suitable for these types of photography, with its 27-210mm ‘effective’ zoom range and competent Vibration Reduction (optical image stabilisation) system. And for when you need to trek into the countryside for shooting wildlife, or stand for long periods at a sporting event, the D5600 won’t weigh you down as it’s one of the lightest and most compact DSLRs on the market. 

The fully articulated touchscreen is an extra bonus, although for live view and video capture, the sensor-based contrast-detection autofocus facility can be painfully slow.

For such a small camera, the Panasonic TZ100 packs in some seriously big specifications and features. It has a 20.1MP 1.0-type sensor that’s physically large for a compact camera, and retains relatively noise-free image quality even at high ISO settings. It also crams in an electronic viewfinder and a high-res, 3.0inch rear screen, plus a 10x zoom lens with an effective range of 25-250mm. 

To keep things steady, there’s optical image stabilisation for stills and 5-axis hybrid stabilisation for video capture. You can also shoot at 4k UHD for both stills and video, with a frame rate of up to 30fps. For full-resolution stills, the burst rate is still speedy at 10fps. 

Clever tricks include ‘post-focus’, which enables you to capture a burst of stills with automatically transitioning focus distances, and select the frame with the ideal focus point afterwards.

Like other ‘tough’ compact cameras on the market, this Olympus Tough TG-5 is designed to take the knocks. It can withstand being submerged in water to a depth of 15 metres, dropped from a height of 2.1 metres and frozen to -10 degrees Celsius. If you’re feeling particularly mean, you can even try crushing it with a 100kg weight, and it’ll still keep on working. 

All in all, it’s a great camera for everything from skiing down mountains to snorkelling in the sea. The maximum burst rate is a similarly action-packed 20fps, and you can also capture 4k UHD movies. The 4x optical zoom lens adds versatility, as do the built-in macro and microscopic modes. To take things even further, a range of optional accessories includes fisheye and telephoto lens converters. While Olympus has since released a Tough TG-6, we'd say this model is the best pick for beginners' offering basically the same package (the new version has an identical sensor and lens; really the only difference is some new modes) for a better price,

The best camera for beginners: What to consider

As mentioned above, cameras will always have certain advantages over smartphones. These include larger sensors, which mean the cameras perform better in low light, as well as massive improvements in the matter of lenses. Whether you're using a DSLR or mirrorless camera that lets you swap lenses depending on the situation, a zoom-equipped compact that can get close to a subject, or even a fixed-focal-length compact that's been engineered for optical perfection, you're guaranteed to have something superior to the lens on the back of your phone. Or the front, for that matter – and thanks to many cameras now having flip-out screens, your selfie game can step up considerably.

Then there's also the fact that cameras can burst-shoot faster for capturing quick-moving subjects, have more sophisticated autofocus systems, and tend to offer higher resolutions that allow you to make larger physical prints of your images. There's no doubt about it – a camera is the way to go!

The best type of camera for beginners 

First, let's look at the different types of camera available for beginners. If your priorities are simplicity and portability, there’s a lot to be said for a small point-and-shoot camera that you can slip into your daily bag or even a spare pocket. These cameras will have a lens fixed on the front, so while you won't be able to use any focal length that isn't specified on the box, most models will offer a respectable zoom range to work with. There will generally also be a built-in flash, and possibly a viewfinder that helps you compose your shots.

A more versatile option is a 'system' camera, which consists of a separate body and interchangeable lenses. Once you're equipped with two or three lenses, you can shoot anything from portraiture and still life, to action sports and wildlife, or sweeping landscapes and architecture, getting great results every time. 

They start small, with mirrorless or compact system cameras. These tend to be portable and offer faster shooting speeds than their larger siblings, DSLRs. However, don't count DSLRs out, as they are able to offer an optical viewfinder that gives you an unadulterated 'through-the-lens' view of what you're shooting. They also tend to be better weather-sealed and equipped with chunkier handgrips for a secure hold.

Also worth considering are instant print cameras! Analogue is back in a big way, and there's something to be said for a camera that doesn't necessitate messing about with memory cards and hard drives, and just spits out an instant physical print. If your creative work is more tactile/physical (perhaps incorporating collage) then this is definitely a viable option. 

Finally, there are also 'tough' cameras, which have smaller sensors than mainstream compacts, but are heavily waterproofed and can survive rough conditions.

But which to pick? Well, it depends on what you need. Do you want something small and portable or hardy and weatherproof? Are you likely to be shooting video as well as stills? Do you see yourself buying more lenses, or would you prefer a single package that does it all? The answers to all these questions will affect which camera is best for you.

Read more:

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