When I did my Uncles wedding as a favour, my first thought was "I'm going to need something faster than my 16-45 F4 here". It was the excuse I needed to buy a 50 f/1.4.

I wouldn't dream of calling myself a pro photographer or trying to market myself as one, yet it was obvious to me that slow kit zooms were not going to cut the mustard.

Having done the wedding, my initial suspicions were confirmed. That is, if I was going to do anything like that regularly I would need a set of DA* f/2.8 zooms (most notably the 50-135).

Of course, if I was charging even the low end of the prices I've been quoted for wedding photography, those lenses would pay for themselves in 3 or 4 gigs. Shame I'm not a good enough photog really.

oh that's not fair, I work just outside Swindon and I'm trying to save for a wedding here! quick everyone, snap them up before I see what I'm missing!

I too have found that DA series lenses tend (general rule, so there will probably be exceptions!) to be more contrasty and give more saturated colour rendition than older (eg A series) glass.

I prefer the rendition of the older lenses personally, as I find it more flexible. I believe the newer lenses are intended to give a more "print ready" result, although that is just my assumption rather than based on any real evidence.

I think they're all (the 'judge' included) rather objectionable stereotypical yanks. The plaintif wants something for nothing, the defendant wants to make money out of her hobby without investing in the kit and the judge thinks he's better than either of them and likes to waffle about things he doesn't really understand.

as for professional photography being impossible with a 6mp camera, who exactly do you imagine was buying the original Canon 1D in 2001?

My K10D cut out on me at about -10C in Paris last December, I believe the batteries don't perform as well at low temperatures. When I got back to my villa she warmed up and worked fine for the rest of the holiday, I was just a bit more careful to keep her warm.

pretty cool looking shots, I think I'll leave this subject to you though, I don't fancy the conversation with my better half about why there is a mouldy tomato in the house.

typing this on my Asus eee 900 under Ubuntu Linux, excellent little machine and the Linux version comes with 20 GB of flash storage. No moving parts so it's nice and robust for travel.

I've done full photo editing on machines half this speed so those saying the netbooks aren't up to it have simply been spoiled by their desktops, you will want a RAW editor with a batch mode though as the CPU probably wont keep up with you.

The eee can do anything my main laptop can do, it just takes a little longer.

it only weighs 1.7 kilos, I hand hold my Tamron 300 f/2.8 all the time and that's more like 2.1.

a bigma with OS would be easily hand holdable IMO. Of course even with OS you'll still need fairly good light.

it has long been my belief that animals and birds have an extra sense which allows them to determine the maximum effective range of any camera/lens combination and stay just outside it. The more interesting or photogenic the creature, the keener this sense seems to become.

although I haven't used it, and therefore could be completely wrong, I wouldn't bother with the Sigma 28-80.

It's a low end lens, being of standard "kit" zoom aperture. 28-80 isn't a popular length on digital so it will be a film era design and at that time (arguably still) Sigma's low end lens quality left a lot to be desired. If it was an F2.8 it might be worth a look, as their good lenses can be very good, but an f/3.5-5.6 I would not look twice at.

The Tamron is reputedly the best of it's class (it's class being zooms with crazy long focal length) and as Gwyn shows above is capable of good results. Personally though I'd take a twin lens kit over a hyperzoom any day of the week.

It'd be the 55-300 for me.