When you’re about to get your first dSLR, the endless array of lenses, flashes and other accessories might be intimidating. If you’re buying the camera from a brick and mortar store, you might think it would be a good idea to ask for advice in the store, but the friendly sales personnel in the store might not be as good-hearted as you might want to think.
It has happened more than once that I’ve been given bad, sometimes quite ridiculous, advice by the sales personnel in camera stores. Sometimes intensions aren’t exactly bad, but there’s just a lack of knowledgeable personnel. Other times bad advice has clearly been motivated by trying to sell products that have better profit margins or commissions. And this is why it’s so important to do some research before you start shopping.
So what is the bare minimum that you would need in a dSLR starter’s kit? 1) A dSLR camera is of course the first thing you will need. 2) And to be able to use that camera you will need a lens. Usually it’s possible to get an inexpensive “kit lens” which most of the time is a zoom lens that will cover moderate wide angle to moderate telephoto. If you’re coming from a film SLR it’s good to remember that with most entry-level dSLR there’s a field of view crop factor (henceforth fovcf) that you will have to take into account when looking at the focal length of the lenses. Canon’s entry-level dSLR cameras have a fovcf of 1.6 while for instance Nikon, Pentax, Konica Minolta and Sony has a fovcf of 1.5. By knowing the fovcf, you are able to calculate what the equivalent field of view would be on a film SLR with the same lens. For instance the Canon kit lens (18-55mm) has the same field of view that a 29-88mm would have on a film SLR (or full frame dSLR).
3) Memory cards are a must. And since memory cards are quite cheap today, don’t buy the smallest you can find. Buy big enough so that you can fit a lot of photos just to be on the safe side. It’s never a bad idea to have an extra memory card either. As a general rule I would say it’s smarter to buy two 4GB cards than one 8GB. If you’re on vacation and shoot a lot of photos without being able to download them to the computer, you have the ability to switch between the two cards every now and then just in case one of the cards would fail before you get home. That way you haven’t lost all your photos, but just a part of them. When it comes to memory cards I would also recommend going by the better-known brands like SanDisk or Lexar. I’ve always used SanDisk myself, and during the last 4 years I haven’t had a single card fail on me. However, a small warning goes with this recommendation. There have been quite a lot of fake memory cards in circulation, so when you buy memory cards go with a reputable seller to spare you a headache.
4) You will of course also need a carrying bag for the camera and a few accessories to protect them from dust, weather and the occasional bump. Things to look for in a good camera bag is a) it doesn’t scream camera bag and you’re able to have good control over the bag when carrying it (a simple way of lowering the risk of getting robbed), b) it’s comfortable to carry even for a whole day, c) it’s at least to some extent weather sealed (it doesn’t have to withstand torrential rain, but you don’t want the first rain drops to go through) and d) there’s a little bit of extra room for one or two additional accessories so that you will not need to buy a new bag for the first new accessory you buy.
Two things that might or might not make your starter’s kit are 5) a large-aperture prime lens. Most manufacturers offer a quite inexpensive 50mm f/1.8 lens, which is a perfect second lens when you’re starting off. The large aperture of f/1.8 gives you a chance to play and learn about shallow depth of field and is very useful for taking portraits or detail photos where you want the background to be blurred. As it is a fixed focal length lens it also makes you move around more and “zoom with your feet”, making you think more of different angles and composition. 6) An external hot-shoe mounted flash (preferably one that can swivel and tilt) is probably the last starter’s kit accessory you will need in your bag. You might think that because all entry-level dSLR cameras come with a built-in pop-up flash you wouldn’t need an external hot-shoe mounted flash, but as you might notice quite fast the built-in flash is a) quite underpowered and b) will give you the same ugly “caught in the headlights” look you always get with the point and shoot cameras. This is because the flash is located so close to the lens and since it will only point straight forward, you will not be able to bounce the flash via walls or ceilings and make it look more like natural light.
One thing that most sellers want you to buy is a protective filter for the lenses (usually uv-filters). I will not go into the whole “to use protective filters or not” debate which has been raging on Internet forums for years (I might in a another post later), but I will say that the “middle of the road” filters they want to sell you will only harm the image quality by reducing colors and contrast and introducing unwanted flare. There are usable protective uv-filters around, but they will set you back $/€ 50-100 depending on the size, and using that kind of money on a lens that will cost between $/€ 100-200 might seem quite ridiculous. This is definitely a case where the sales personnel want to make money instead of giving you good advice.
I did almost forget two very usable accessories, but you will like these two since they will not break the bank 
Since you are making such a sizeable investment in your kit, it would be silly not to get a micro-fiber cloth and a small air-blower to keep your equipment clean and tidy. And when it comes to the air-blower you should avoid the canned air version and instead go with the ball version. The Giottos Rocket air blower is a popular version among photographers and personal favorite.
As a lot of us immigrate to the dSLR camp from digital point & shoot (henceforth P&S) (compact) cameras, we tend to carry over some baggage from the P&S usage. Most people shooting P&S cameras are extremely comfortable in the full automatic world, where the camera makes all most decisions. That’s why these compact cameras are called “point and shoot” cameras (you just point it at something and click). A lot of these P&S cameras even lack most of the manual controls, and usually it’s very cumbersome to use them in manual (even if would be possible).
