DMerg10 wrote:
Is it better to spend your money on high quality used equipment or buy the best new equipment possible on the same budget?
Yes and yes. I have always bought new because I could afford it. But some of the new stuff I bought is unusable (e.g. 2 cheap Opteka lenses). It is okay to buy Used (from quality vendors), or refurbished like new quality equipment, or new quality equipment. That said, it all depends on what you want in the way of pictures. I started my journey by reading. My goal was, and still is, 24x36 inch prints at 300 dpi (this implies 80 megapixels, but I did not know there was such a thing as Medium Format cameras until a year later). If you are satisfied with good looking pictures under 8.5x11 inches then most modern lenses will work for you. If you want to take Birds In Flight (BIF) then you need fast continuous Auto Focus. If you want pictures in dim light, you need a quality (larger) High ISO sensor and "fast" large apertures like f/1.4, 1.8, 2.8 etc.; these lenses are more expensive than f/4 to f/6 lenses.
I was impressed with the then-new Sony A7 series of cameras and bought a small Sony point & shoot with the same BIONZ processor because it was on sale for $99. With that camera, I learned the importance of correct white-balance. Then I bought a Sony A7ii, and then an A7Rii. At the same time, I love to reach out and zoom-in a lot. It was much cheaper to buy the Sony HX400V bridge camera ($450) with a 24-1200 equivalent zoom lens than to try to match that reach on an Interchangeable lens camera. (It still cannot be done.) And some of the pictures I have taken with that 20mp camera I can print at 13x19 inches and they look as good as pictures taken with the A7Rii camera. The weaknesses of the HX400V are: 1. Because of the tiny sensor, it does not work well in dim light (without the built-in flash), and 2. It only shoots JPEG, not RAW. Now I also have the Sony RX10iii (and the new RX10iv is even better with faster autofocus). With a 1" sensor, it does well even in medium light, and it can shoot RAW files, but its lens only zooms 24-600mm. But the cost was $1300.
Basically, you need to know what you want as an end result of your picture taking. How many pixels high & wide for the Web, for photo albums, for large gallery prints or what? (I am working toward large gallery prints, 4x6 feet for example.) And you need to know what you are shooting: Action, sports, still scenes, snapshots, Outdoors, Indoors, bright light, dim light? What? (I shoot still things in natural light.) Keeping that in mind, read a lot of reviews or articles (google etc.) about "the best camera for shooting ...". But don't always believe what you read in magazines. Popular Photography (now defunct) and Shutterbug are mostly promoting their advertiser's products, so they use vague abstract adjectives like "excellent" instead of concrete measurable numbers. I don't recall Popular Photography ever mentioning Medium Format cameras, but Shutterbug did.
One of my favorite HX400V pictures: