Photography

» Philip Northeast - Good camera for professional quality?

Looking at a range of entry level digital SLRs most come with bundles with an 18-50mm zoom lens. The price is usually not much more than buying the camera body without a lens so they are a good starting point.

These are usually average lenses rather than examples of their premium professional range. However, they are good value for money as general-purpose lens. The range of focal lengths covers most average situations. With a good wide angle view for including broad sweeps of a garden while longest focal length produces a short telephoto effect for portraits.

At 50mm close up shots of flowers and insects have that shallow depth of field to highlight naturally the subject against an out of focus background. This will be more pronounced than your point and shoot.

One lens type you may consider as an additional lens is a specialist macro prime (not zoom ) lens. They are common around 70mm to 100mm focal length. Their design allows them to focus on subjects much closer to the lens than a normal lens. This allows you to fill the frame with small subjects such as flowers and insects to produce stunning images.

The lens can also be used for normal photography as well and they make excellent portrait lenses.

Have a look at the B&H site as they offer a comprehensive range of cameras and lenses and their sorting and filtering allows easy comparison of the offerings from teh various manufacturers.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/

I have assumed one of your main subject areas is flowers and gardens, hence the macro suggestion.