And I'm just curious, for someone deciding to pick up a new hobby, why spend 10k or so on new gear when your not even sure how much you would enjoy it? Why not start small, and work ur way up ?
-Short answer: I didn't spend it all at once. Slightly shorter answer: It's hardly a "new" hobby.
I've been "into" photography since... well, lets just say very early. I really got into it in high school, when I picked up an old and well-used Pentax K-1000 and some lenses. (Still have some of the lenses, don't know what happened to the body.) I took at least two photography classes, and was on the yearbook staff for one semester- as a photographer.
Later I picked up a Minolta XG-M, then an X-700 (which I still have) and used those up until '99 or so. In '99, I bought a cheap (well, spendy at the time) Olympus point-and-shoot digital, since almost all my photography at the time was simply taking pics of paintball guns and mods, and posting them to my website. The PnS wasn't great, but it saved me a bundle that first year, in film and developing, plus saved the time of having to scan and crop.
Come 2005, the Olympus is getting tired, and I wanted to go back to "real" photography- and the first real, decent, and affordable digital SLRs were out by then (notably Canon's Rebel, but also Nikon's line.) I almost bought a first-gen Rebel but couldn't afford it, and finally picked up a Rebel XT in early 2005.
That was a great deal of fun, and I remembered what it was like back in the days of shooting the Minoltas. Plus the sheer clarity over the tiny 1.3MP Olympus pics, plus finally the option of some good long zooms for telephoto work.
That original (full retail price) $1,000 camera eventually led to better lenses later that summer, a battery grip so I could shoot a whole days' tourney without worrying, and the first of the accessories like filters and a monopod.
That lasted me a year (and still works great) but I wanted a bit more- mainly a faster frame rate for shooting games. That meant the big pro cameras, and while I surely didn't "need" it, I did want it, and finagled a way to get it.
I've since added more lenses, more filters, a nice bag, a flash, and other goodies.
And yes, it's a lot to have spent on a hobby, but I'm not married, have no kids, and pretty much gave up all my other hobbies over the last five or six years, so why not? I did also have a shop project in the back of my mind, and it's still under way if I can ever get the print shop to return some calls.
