I have decided to take up my photography hobby again. After researching what camera to purchase ran across lots of microstock sites and Im excited to try my hand at it. Ive ben reading and researching for 5 months. I have decided to buy a Canon XTI and a couple of lens. I have Adobe Photoshop 7 at home(have it for 5 years I think and have never used it) will have to go find a dummies book. Now I know there will be a learning curve of getting aquainted with the camera. But curious what you all think I will need to get me started. I have a budget of $1500.00 with the camera. Also is Adobe Photoshop 7 a good program for cleaning up photos enough to be ready for microstock approval? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thank you,Rocco

Hi Rocco

I am no expert with camera (I do most of my work in Illustrator) so cant advise you on the camera but photoshop 7 was the top software of the time, its getting a bit long in the tooth now but is more than good enough to get you started.

Nicemonkey

Thank you,is there another program that anyone can suggest. One that would be perfect for microstock to clean up RAW files for upload,easy to use(or learn), and is not too expensive? Also does anyone recommend that I purchase one of those tablets? Will this make learning easier?

I love those tablets. Just because the interface is interesting and sometimes better. Canon makes very nice camera's so I don't think you can go wrong...their photos are always nice. You may want to upgrade to a new body sometime in a couple years so buy EF lenses instead of the EF-S lenses that aren't compatable with most of Canon's higher end DSLR's.

Software...PS7 works great. If you know how to use Levels and Curves especially, which aren't hard.

Good luck with your new and exciting hobby!

Glenn
Designer of DBGallery, the photo database system.
"An excellent system for organizing your photos."
www.grrsystems.com/DBGallery

Has anyone ordered off of Amazon? I have checked out all mail order places I can think of to buy equipment Amazon seems to have the best all around rating. The pricing is excellent also. I am thinking of ordering the XTI body,50mm 1.8 and 28-55mm IS lenses. Does that sound like a good start?

Hi, I order frequently from Amazon and have always been really happy with them. Their prices are always competitive with the other top sellers on the internet. As for RAW converters, I use and really like Bibble. It is made by Bibble Labs and I think cost around 60 dollars. It has noise ninja built in which is handy, also tools from removing chromatic abberation, lens distortion, etc. Also allows batch conversions and all the usual exposure, contrast, saturation, levels, etc. Check out there website, they have some examples and tutorials. I am sure there are lots of RAW converters out there, so not sure how it compares, but I really like it.

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