So, you’ve seen your friend’s photos. They are beautiful. The more you look at them, the more envious you get. This drives you to un-thinkable horizons. You long to join the club. You want to keep up with the Jones’.

You then decide that you would want to take a picture of boring steel buildings and turn them into Van Gogh. OK, well, almost. Basically, you want to take pictures exactly like those of your friend’s. The quickest way would be to ask your friend and have him tell you how.

However, if you choose to urm, surprise him with your err…skill, then you gotta acquire it first. But, where do you begin?

Tell you what…I’ll pave the way for you to get started; you know, just to have some idea. How does that sound? Wonderful? Well then, lets get down to business shall we :

Firstly, your friend probably owns a DSLR. Alright, he told you he does. And you are thinking of getting one as well. You are probably right. But..which one? There are countless of models, brands etc…you can go nuts just trying to decide which one.

I’ll be bias here; I’ll narrow down the field for you. Forget about other brands and simply concentrate on a Nikon or a Canon brand. Now, I am not saying that the other brands are useless but because these 2 are highly popular among pros and ametuers. So, if you want to say sell your lenses or get used ones, there are more out there in the market than say a Sony.

Plus, when you begin your journey (and depending on how strictly you want to see this through), you will find that one lens isn’t enough. Therefore, sourcing for lenses of a popular brand would definitely be easier.

Alright, you’ve now decided on a brand – Nikon (I told you I’m bias). There are plenty out there. You get confused. I was once like you. I didn’t know what to get. An entry-level, the mid-range, the prosumer..the list is endless. If you face the same difficulty, I’ll help you decide – look at your budget. Seriously, photography is a rich man’s game. Lenses can costs thousands of dollars. Until and unless you have carved a name for yourself in that brands like Nikon would send you one for free, you have to purchase them yourself and they don’t cost chicken feet.

You have to be realistic in terms of budgeting. If you are tight, get an entry-level camera and use the access cash for lenses. At the end, it’s the lenses that you’ll keep for a long time. Furthermore, once you know your way around your camera and it’s limitations, you’ll know how to overcome them.

If you want to read more on the SLR system, you could try Photo.net. One of their very popular and informative article appropriately titled Building a Digital SLR System.

I’ll talk more about what happens next when you have purchased yourself a DSLR, apart from oooing and gooing at it all day. …in the next post. So, stick around will ya..