camera: canon 350D
lens:17-40L
next buy: ?
Hi, I started a few months ago and I started with D80 kit plus the essentials like a tripod, flash unit, and 50mm. I usually do travel, street, and conference photography.
1) Tripod - good for night scenes of large buildings especially at night. Also good for still photos, like taking pictures of the night sky or a waterfall/river etc.
2) Flash, this is very essential and can set you back by as much as S$500, good for daylight fill flash (not so often used), and night shots and low light conditions (conference rooms, hotel lobby, etc). Buy this if you often take pics in these kinda situations. The bad side of this is that it usually distorts the lighting in conference halls/changes the ambience of the pic (warm ambience becomes dull/normal).
3) 50mm/55m - still the best alternative to a high cost portrait lens. This is a very good investment as you will always want to see very nice blurring in your pics. You also don't need to use flash with this lens all the time.
4) After all of this, the next thing I really invested in was a fast lens - the 17-55 2.8F, pls note the aperture. With this lens, there is a big difference in my pictures, focusing to shooting time was now FAST, and this allows me to shoot pics without needing to use flash all the time. Its a bit heavy but worth the extra weight. Nowadays, I use this lens 80-90 percent of the time and has become a replacement for my kit lens. Btw, I am now selling my kit lens because of this.
4) But then again, if you usually take pics of zoos, birds, you might want to get a longer range to complement your existing lens, say something like a 70-200 range with IS/VR. Why do I say that you need IS/VR? Becoz with a lens like this, there is a big possibility for camera shaking due to the sheer weight of your camera plus lens.
GodSp33d.
