Photography noob seeks advice

[Greeny.]

Looking for a new hobby and photograhpy might be it, basicly just after some costs/ideas for someone new to get into it? I mainly take pics of my car more than anything else but that might well change.

Firstly what camera should I go for? I dont really want to spend more than around £150 on my first if possible, would I be able to pickup a second hand D40 for this?

Also what sort of lenses would I need if any? Are lenses mainly for long shots etc?

Finally as far as rendering the images on my PC, what are peoples fave apps? Photoshop would be one I would have thought but ive never really looked into this so would need to look through some guides, is there anything else about to mess about with images though?

Cheers for any help!
Dan

 

[Fletcher]

Not to sure what you can get for £150, but the D40 is a great camera to start with.

I use flickr for my pics/images.

 

[DannyR]

I'll bring my Canon 450D over next Saturday and you can have a play mate.

You'll definitely need to put a bit more money into it. Photoshop is best for fiddling with photos, plenty of cracked copies around rather than paying silly amounts for it!

 

[Greeny.]

I'll bring my Canon 450D over next Saturday and you can have a play mate.

You'll definitely need to put a bit more money into it. Photoshop is best for fiddling with photos, plenty of cracked copies around rather than paying silly amounts for it!

Ye I have a copy of it somewhere, never installed it though.

Ill pay more money for a camera, but I have no idea what im looking for, probably end up getting one for xmas if I think im gunna get into it

 

[Rob Clark]

d40 or a canon 350d / 400d / 450d etc would be a good starter (i picked up a new 350d in new year for 80 quid as a clearance item in pc world )
these generally come with a rather crappy kit lens which works at 18-66 mm which is a poor mans not too great zoon lens. most go for 2 or 3 extra lenses. one being a longer zoon in the 70-200 or 300 range (ive just got a 7-300 by sigma), a a 50mm prime (meaning non zoom - dont let this put you off, because it cant zoom the glass and f ratings on it a re superb meaning it is much faster and great for day to day stuff) and then some go for a macro (or close up) such as a 10-20 mm lens or sometime a fisheye one which is a tad more specialist.
As with anything, you can always spend more money. A 50mm prime @ 1.8f can be got for 60 quid + (~90 quid retail new), i recently managed to get a sigma apo 70-300 for 120 quid as it was imported from the usa but uk retail is 170+ quid atm.
unfortunately you are buying at the wrong time as since xmas prices have rocketed a little.
on the software side, paint shop pro and photoshop are good commercial packages which can usually aqucired, however, have a look at paint.net which is free and very powerful too !

 

[Sarah]

flickr...picnic thingy is a great tool for editing photos, altho i dont use it much, but for simply amendments its great i should really go pro on flickr tbh and make full use of it

as for cost, its worth putting that extra into it as you will prob get something cheap and cheerful and soon want to upgrade it to a better camera