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Anonymous
I'll add my two cents since you do seem to be genuinely interested, I actually thought the post was going to be a huge troll.
Buy a Canon Digital Rebel XT or XTi (or Nikon D40, all around pretty good but it can't auto-focus with a lot of lenses. . Nikon's way of forcing you to pay more in the long run).
The XT is Canon's current bottom of the line DSLR, and they just dropped the price to an excellent $400 for the body only new (don't get a kit, the kit lens sucks terribly). This is a great starting point because it gives you a good $600 wiggle for two good lenses you won't ever replace.
When you read the name of a lens, it contains two numbers, such as "50mm 1.4." (If it's a zoom, then obviously it'll be more like 18-55/ 3-5.5.6). The first number is your focal length, second number is the lowest possible f-stop, which is how much light you can get in, basically.
Different people look for different things in lenses, personally, I think the f-stop is the most important. If you want to take your indoor shots, or just get nice shots of your dog on those cloudy/overcast days, or just any time in the evening outside, you need the lowest f-stop possible (lower is better). I'd always give priority to f-stop over focal length; your feet can walk you forward or backward (in MOST situations), but you can't magically make more light, in any situation. If one lens looks so much more useful than another for the same price, the seemingly more expensive one has a lower f-stop, that's why.
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