Minimum equipment list?

[rpcrowe]

Here's what my minimal kit would be (in the order in which I would purchase the items). Most companies except Canon supply lens hoods for all their lenses. Canon basically supplies lens hoods only for their L Class and macro lenses. Anyway, I would make sure that I had a hood. I use mine ALL THE TIME

1. DSLR: (I like to shoot with two cameras but one would be fine for a minimal kit) with Mid-range zoom lens: A kit lens might be just fine for starting out. However a higher quality lens might be in your future.

2. Extra battery for camera ( I always carry an extra battery or two)

3. Extra memory card or two to fit camera

4. Circular polarizer

5. Tripod... A lot has been said about tripods. Top-line tripods are expensive. But, cheap tripods can be trashy. Sometimes you can get a good tripod used but, buying a used tripod might be chancy if you don't know what you are looking for. Adorama carries some fairly decent tripods in their Flash Point line. Manfrotto and Giottos also have some decent mid range tripods...

6. Telephoto zoom lens: Same comments as for the mid-range lens in #1

7. Some sort of a bag to carry your gear...

You can do a lot of photography with the above equipment.

I would look into a main-line editing program. Lots of folks on CiC use GIMP which is free. Others usePhotoshop Elements which is low in cost but, has its limitations and many people subscribe to Photoshop CS for about $10 USD per month...

Later, you might look into a neutral density filter and a graduated neutral density filter.

Now, if you want to shoot people and or pets, I would definitely suggest a hotshoe flash and a modifier such as the Joe Demb Flash Diffuser Pro. www.dembflashproducts.com.

[inkista]

Memory cards.... ....spare battery.

Ah. Yes, assuming a brand-new camera owner who has absolutely nothing but the camera, then the basic one-size-fits-all recommends are: extra cards, spare battery, a card reader, post-processing software, and sufficient data storage/backup.

[William W]

. . .wear your current gear smooth taking it out everywhere, shooting everything and trying to experiment - look critically on what you produce and the quality will come.

Sage.
Eloquent.