danvuquoc

LOL, reading this old thread I was cringing at the Canon vs. Nikon stuff.

thejohnremus

If you have canon gear, only buy canon strobes... and for those who shoot nikon, only buy nikon strobes... nothing else will work as well with your body

kitwetzler

For car photography, remember that it is hard to make good use of the flash. You'll need some BIG diffusers to light the car evenly and not get hot spots. I never use flashes when I do car stuff.

They are handy for catching the rapidly moving kid, tho!

(mine is on the left)

stevoe88

I think a good starting point to learn a little bit before you jump into full frame cameras (5D, 1D etc.) is to get a rebel; xt, xti, xsi whichever comes up as a better deal first. Pair it up with the tamron 17-50mm IS f/2.8 is a really good starting set up. It's a pretty decent walk around lens, and it's pretty darn sharp. I'm planning on moving onto a 5D Mark 2 end of this year, paired up to a 24-70mm f/2.8 L as my primary lens, and that's after using my rebel for about 2 years. Just know that rebels are classified as crop bodies (they use a sensor called APS-C) I wouldn't bother getting the 30/40/50D's for a couple of reasons which are all personal opinion. Image quality would be pretty much the same since they use the same sensors as the rebels, the only thing different would be ISO control (it can shoot higher ISO, and a lot less noisy [grainy] ) and a few other stuff like live view, AF micro adjustment and so on.

And if you've decided on a Nikon, disregard everything I have just said, I have no experience with them, and I am a hardcore canon fan lol.





EDIT:

Just realized this thread is hella old and you've already made a decision. LOLOL my bad, just disregard everything I said in general. As for some flash gear, i'm planning on picking up some vivitar strobes (a couple external slaves, and a master slave) but that's also just personal preference. I don't know much about light gear so... yeah.

mmagic

while Mr/ Remus makes a valid point, i dont completely agree with his verdict that you should only go with canon/nikon flashes. yes, the ettl is nice. sure the idiot functions are great. but if you get stuck in that mode where you let the camera/flash do most of the work, you will never truely learn to use your flash. thats why im a fan of both canon flashes, AND manual flashes like the vivitar/sunpack/etc. The only problem ive ever encountered with off brand strobes was some color shifts by mixing and matching different strobes, but since most people reading this couldnt tell the difference to begin with, its a non-issue (for the sake of this thread).

s4play

Very nice pics, cute kids I've been doing a lot of baby name shopping.....

thanks for all the advice - yes I have my 40D camera and now looking to pickup a second lense.

On advice from you guys I signed up for this forum:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/index.php

Now I'm even more confused - it's information OVERLOAD! I will read up some more over there and definitely follow the advices here

I need to save up some more money since I did not realize some of this stuff is so expensive! I put these two things on my TO BUY list based on everyone's recommendations:

Canon 580EXII Flash
Canon EF-S 17-55mm 2.8 w/ IS

nguystep

those two are def good decisions!

only thing I would worry about is that if you ever plan to upgrade from that 40d, that 17-55mm would have to be sold =[

amazing lense though!

Also I use a vivitar 285hv and a 430ex with my cheap cybersyncs for my off camera strobing