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Expensive Pro equipment isn't going to make you a great photographer.. even a point and shoot digital can produce great results when used properly. It's digital, don't be scared to play around with new ideas, its not going to cost you a fortune to process them ... just a few CD's or some disk space and some time to play around. When buying a digital camera bear in mind Mega-Pixels make mega-pictures. The more you have the better the results. Don't have a digital camera or need a better one but can't afford one?? No problem..
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When I bought my first digital camera it took floppy disks and had a 640x480 resolution which is about the same as your average webcam today. I moved up to a 2.3 mega-pixel Kodak DC290 and today I use a Canon EOS 10D digital SLR, but if you aren't a keen amateur photographer and don't need the features and expense of a digital SLR.. shop around for a nice high pixel compact. One of the best camera review sites is http://www.dpreview.com so pop in and take a look around. When buying a camera take into account the type of memory card and power it takes. I need a lot of power and a lot of memory when I go out because I know I'll be taking hundreds of pictures at a time. You don't want to be at a special occasion and find out your battery died and your cards are full.. in general you can buy AA batteries almost everywhere, but trying to find a brand specific lithium.. well now that gets tricky. A tripod is a great thing to have handy and it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg. There are so many options when it comes to tripods, so just choose the one that best suits your needs and the type of camera you have. I'd recommend finding a bean bag to throw in your camera bag too; they really come in handy when you want the support and steadiness, but there is no place for a tripod. I've used them to steady a camera on top of cars, fencing and fancy walls ...anything with uneven surfaces, they just let you bed the camera securely in awkward places. If you can sew just make one with rice grains or small pulses it works just as well. If you have the spare cash and are serious about your photography, try finding one of those tripods that clamp to your car window .. ooh would I love one of those!!! Printers are just a matter of choice.. if you are serious about your pictures you'll want to have them printed commercially or spend a wad of dough on a good high end printer, but you know what.. nowadays you can print up pretty decent pics on the cheaper models too. Paper quality makes as much difference as printers .. if its something really important use a commercial service. My personal preference for printers is HP and Lexmark, I have never had any problems with either of them except they do have a tantrum occasionally over some of the specialist papers..other than that quality is great on my inexpensive Lexmark and the HP. The Hp is a 1220C which I bought because it does the larger prints which I really like, it wasn't cheap but I've had it over 4 years and it's still as good as ever. You don't have to have the biggest and best and latest stuff to get good results .. none of the stuff I use is less than a year old now. Upgrade when you need to.. not just because something new came out, you can never keep up with this industry unless you have a healthy trust fund or rob banks for a living LOL Again.. if you feel the need to upgrade but money isn't flowing like Niagara Falls.. check out Cashnetsweeps, there isn't much you can't find to win on there. I won a fantastic graphics card from AMD worth about $500 so go check it out. My personal preference for protecting my equipment is a Lowepro backpack. It's light comfortable and nicely designed and depending on what kind of camera you have and how much extra kit you carry with you lenses, batteries, filters etc etc ... it's a much better choice for me than a carrying case or shoulder strap version. It's packed and ready to grab and go at anytime, and it's so comfy you can run round with it day in day out and not worry. The newer one which I have my eye on also has a compartment for storing your laptop which would be extremely useful to me ... well when I get my laptop fixed ... the hard drive just died on me *rolleyes. Either that or I'm going to start saving up for some gadgets like a flashtrax or something along those lines. Memory cards are really dropping in price now too, so grab a few spares if you have some pennies lying around. Cameras are getting better and better all the time and if yours shoots in RAW mode it really will chomp through the card space. Well worth it for the quality if you print tho :) back when I bought my Kodak I paid $349 for a 128MB card, nowadays I could get an 8 GB card for that price.. oh how times change. Some of the new storage gadgets like the flashtrax and the like are really useful if you plan to travel and want to take a lot of pictures. I've been looking around at some of the new gadgets and find there are quite a few alternatives which vary in price and features. One thing that caught my eye was a very inexpensive USB coupler that allows you to transfer from the card reader directly to a USB device such as an external harddrive or other USB storage devices. This could be interesting, my only concern is the lack of being able to view the transferred images to make sure they were ok before I format the card to re-usse it. But it's a great idea if you need a non PC enviroment to transfer images. Anyone who is concerned about lost photos on a card.. and yes we've all done it or will do it at some point, there are some softwares around that can recover lost data so don't panic. As long as you do not overwright then you should be able to retreive with PC Inspector Smart recovery....someone I know on one of the forums had even formatted the card and had 100% success. Download from www.convar.com or you could try a program called Zero Assumption for retreival.