My Canon T3

This is my new camera. I bought it about two months before my birthday, after saving up for nearly a year. Finally the time was right! (Saving up for that long allowed me to buy it with cash instead of on credit as well as providing a long time for me to research and decide what I really wanted. No spontaneous purchase here! Plus, I bought it on Father's Day weekend, so I got a great deal.)

I have a fantastic point-and-shoot camera, but having more lenses offers more flexibility. This camera is 12.2 megapixels, which used to be a lot but is sort of middle of the road now. The highest I found was 18. I weighed the cost of the camera versus the 6 additional megapixels, and it wasn't enough for me to pay that amount. I'm not a professional photographer, and none of my photos will be printed bigger than 8x10, so this will be fine.

You can also pay more for a higher resolution of video. I don't use video very often, so that was not a priority for me. (The T3i has better video quality, if that is a priority for you. I rarely use video, so I didn't care.)

This camera is great for the price. It comes with lots of megapixels, the flexibility of interchangeable lenses, high (enough) resolution video, and all the features I could ever imagine or use. It is a great camera for families, photographing kids as well as weddings and other events, and anything else you would need. Yet it is inexpensive enough to be worth the purchase. The perfect middle ground, in my opinion.

For my birthday, I asked my dad for this lens. (I actually got it 6 weeks early!) After lots of research and using a few long lenses in the store, this is the one I chose. The length is much farther than the next one down. The only downside is that there is no image stabilization (IS). In bright sunlight or with a tripod, this is not a problem though.

This lens is 75-300mm in range, without IS. For a few hundred dollars more, you can get 50-250mm with IS. Again, it's about priorities. I almost exclusively shoot outside in daylight with this one, so the lack of IS has never been a problem for me. The tradeoff was the lower cost and longer range.

It was sort of a compromise lens for me. (A good compromise.) I didn't want to spend a ton of money, but I wanted a better zoom. There is nothing better for the price, though you do lose a few f-stops and the IS. Still, I'm glad I made the choice I did to get this lens.

This is the lens that was on my Christmas list this year (and I got it!). It's a 50mm prime lens, meaning it has no zoom. It is said to be the closest lens to what humans see. The 1.8 f-stop makes it fantastic for depth of field. Now that I have it, I will be content with my three (the kit lens, my zoom, and this one) for a while.

This is a wonderful Canon dSLR prime lens. (A prime lens is one that does not zoom, but has other abilities.) Keep an eye out for a lens about it!