Hi,
Compared with some of the freelancers/professional photographers, I'm just an amateur but I'm just stating and sharing with what I've seen or heard. But feel free to correct me if you think I'm rambling nonsense.
If you really,
REALLY have a passion for photography, I
really suggest you should borrow/buy some books related to photography techniques, e.g., depth-of-field, aperture, shutter speed, framing etc. Know what is the minimum basics about photography.
Wait, I've a reason for saying this because I'm constanly seeing examples like you all the time in my school.
Some people who says they've got all the passion for photography and thinks photography is the best hobby they've. Then they see people around them buying SLR cameras, they follow suit, without thinking twice. These people are influenced into buying SLR cameras blindly because of the peer presure and they thought those pictures in NatGeo or fashion magazines are as easy as pressing the shutter.
Then they invest several hundreds into an SLR, not knowing all the little knobs on the camera and their functions. People end up being discouraged why their pictures turned out crappy, and the camera will most likely end up settling somewhere in the house collecting dust, and never see the light of the day again.
Please don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you're one of them. But I hope you won't become like them.
My lecturer, and almost all the professional photographers told me that there is no such thing as a good or bad camera because at the end of the day, the quality of the photo mostly lies in the skills of the photographer.
Personally, perhaps you can try with the FM10 because it's fully manual. There're a lot of those pro-consumers SLR on the market recently. They've those programme/auto-focus modes so the camera sets almost everything for you. Just my two-cents worth, you can't really learn much with that so getting an FM10 would be a good choice for starters. During my first year, the FM10 was also the first SLR camera I lay my hands on. I feel it was a very good learning tool.
The reason I'm sharing my experiences is because, as we all know, photography is a very, very expensive hobby, and it's a well-known fact.
Sometimes, it makes me a bit sad to see people around me investing huge amounts of money on a good tool without knowing a single thing how to use it.
Regards,
-Michelle-