Advice needed - What should I buy next?

[OldBoy]

Originally Posted by Martin Havens

Although, for £80 you can easily get a 1TB external drive... the prices had rocketed because of the earthquake in China a short while back (at least, I think it was the one in China...) but they seem to have settled down a bit now.

It was floods in Thailand which damaged the factories where the hardisks are made.

[DigiDiva]

For portraits of your wee baby (congratulation by the way, I bet you are still in awe) I would suggest the flash gun. I would say an essential piece of equipment if you are doing baby portraits.

[LaPistola]

Babies skin tends to wash out very quickly with flash so I would have to half support DD's 2p's worth. While the on camera flash can be defused its far easier to turn a flash guns head to use bounce light and attach defuses and produces nicer light. Another pro for a flash gun is that it can freeze action so your images are sharper with a baby that will not stay still.

I would however say external hard drive first as losing pictures is worse. I use my internal HDD as the primary store of photos and an external over network HDD as the back up. Backup software (which there are free versions off) updates the backup on the external every week or daily if I have been adding or editing a lot. I used to backup to my online servers but that takes ages when your shooting in RAW so thats not an option anymore but if your shooting in JPG for now you could use online backup. Shooting in raw is far better though.

[Martin Havens]

Originally Posted by OldBoy

It was floods in Thailand which damaged the factories where the hardisks are made.

There have been so many natural distasters recently, it's hard to keep up...

[wavemachine]

In order:-

External HD as has already been said those photos are precious especially baby ones happy memories and a way of embarassing your child in years to come priceless

Flashgun look at the Nissin offerings a bit noisier than Canon's but just as good or Yongnuo if you don't mind manually setting flash power. Personally I would save the extra for Nissin.

Photoshop Elements 10 or you may be able to pick up a second hand copy of Elements 9 or 8 through Amazon.

[wave01]

hi just read this and without a doubt i would get a good external flash it will add so much to your shots. try and use it bounced from a wall or ceiling
a good cheap easy to use is nissin di622 mk2 the mk1 is also good powerful and easy to use

[patrickwilson86]

Before you make the plunge, read some reviews and take suggestions from the forum. Don't aim too low when choosing a camera. I've never heard anyone complaining that the camera they bought is too good.

Don't rule out used and refurbished cameras from dealers and manufacturers.

Camera Reviews

http://www.kenrockwell.com

http://www.photographytalk.com/photo...s/reviews-home

http://www.dpreview.com

http://www.snapsort.com

http://www.whatdigitalcamera.com/equipment.html

[patrickwilson86]

It is important to note that the D800 shares many features with the Nikon D4—aside from the larger image sensor and a slower frame rate the two cameras are almost identical. They share the same image processor, the same autofocus system (51-points) and a very similar video shooting mode. This does not mean they are the same camera. While some professionals and even advanced amateur photographers will look to the D4 for supreme speed and action shooting, others are going to prefer the less-expensive D800. Price does not always mean everything in the photography world.

[2Beers]

I tend to shy away from external HDD's as they are prone to failure as before I retired the number of people coming into the shop with their ext HDD's that had stopped being recognised or had the click of death was a regular occurrence. Then when you told them the cost of data recovery they would nearly burst into tears as conventional data recovery started around £100 and specialist recovery at around £700 so as has been said backup your data in at least 2 places i have mine backed up on 3 different internal HDD's and also have a cloud backup.