I have known a few people, friends, who dreamed of starting a business. Of course I get excited when I hear this and I encourage them forward. Only one ever succeeded. I made some observations. There are three individuals I'll use to illustrate this. One developed some sophisticated software for the research community. Another wanted to get into photography. A third wanted to sell paperbacks to libraries.

The first lunch we had after each started was pretty well the same, I got an overview of the product or the services. I thought that was fair, after all each had only just started.

The second lunch three months later was more telling. The photographer told me about new techniques he had developed gear he had bought feeeling that will give him a business edge. The developer spoke eloquently about how his application has evolved and how the research community was even more excited about it. The whosaler told me he's lined up a few libraries and what's ahead.

After a year I had lunch with each again. The photographer kept getting better and kept buying more gear to address any needs the customers may have. And he managed to even get a wedding to do but that was it. The developer was still improving his application and getting more people excited but there were no sales. The wholsaler had started to ship half a million dollars of books by then and acticipated doubling that income the next year.

So what happened? Clearly the wholesaler got his business going, the last time we had lunch he was turning over ten milloin a year. The photographer went back to a day job. The developer also went back to a day job.

I have two major passions, crafts and photography. Over six decades, judicious acquisition of tools and gear, have made me very good at these, some say exceptional. And naturally in that situation many have told me I should start a business. My reply to that is that if I were to turn either passion into a business I would hate it because then it would become work instead of fun. Whether pictures or crafts, I'd have to be on the street marketing, I'd have to spend endless hours in craft shows selling, I'd have to keep books and worry about generating enough business to keep myself going. And of course with the crafts I'd be investing in computer conrolled machines to speed up production which means I will never again experience the joy of making something by hand.

If you want to start a businss go for it. But, adjust your focus. Starting a photography business is not a chance to spend your life taking pictures. If that's your goal don't bother, see if you can be an assistant to an existing photographer. If you really want to make money recognize that the pictures people want are not necessarily the ones you want to take. Recognize that what you should be focusing upon is not how many pictures you've taken but rather how many clients you've signed up and how to get more. Recognize you're not in the picture taking business, you are in the business of creating memories and sell yourself that way. If I were to have lunch with you a year from now, I am expecting to hear about your revenues, how they've grown over the past year. I'd want to hear how you've grown your client base and what strategies you have for growing it ever more. I want to hear what your profit margins are and how they have grown. If I hear those things I know you'll succeed. If I don't hear those things, I know you will fail.

If you were to hire a salesman perhaps to sell some of your pictures, what kind of a personality do you need? Well obviously you want one who is persuasive and knows intuitively how to convince people to buy his products. But more importantly, you want someone who is greedy, who wants to retire by the time he's forty. That is the kind of personality that will sell a lot of your pictures. If he lacks that need for wealth he's got no incentive to sell your pictures.

And so it needs to be with you. Opening a busines you have to be greedy, you have to have a passion for making money. That's what a businss is all about, making money. Oh sure you can have softer targets like showing the business world how to care for customers, how to be ethical and fair at all times, how to listen to your customers so your products are always in demand. Those are nice sentiments too and a good thing to do, but in the end if you don't make money, those other semtiments will not happen either. Before you give up your day job set a revenue target for the first year and then set about achieving it. If that is your focus you will win. If that isn't your focus, you won't last long.

Finally, it seems to take about three years to get a business started. At least that's what I've observed. The first year is usually reasonably easy since you've likely put away enough to cover your overheads. The second year is a bit tougher, you don't have a lot of clients yet so you're dipping into your reserves and the road ahead looks bleak. The third year is the worst. Your reserves are gone and though your client base is still growing it's usually not growing fast enough. That is the moment when you have to decide once and for all whether you will finish building your business or start looking for a day job. If you can hold on and take the risk, odds are in your favour and you will find yourself with a very successful business by year four.

I actually also had another friend who made it all the way to year three and then collapsed and got a day job again. He couldn't deal with the stress and he lacked the self confidence to be willing to take a risk. By contrast, my wholesaler's third year was as much of a hell too. Things got so bad for him that I had to bring my own Scotch when visiting. They had to watch every penny. But they were willing to take the risk and in the end they won.

So keep that in mind too.

Good Luck!

Personally, I'm a Nikon guy. As much as I hate to(at times), I have to agree with SS. Get the Canon. You are already acclimated with Canons' controls, their placement, the various settings/menus and above all, their "feel." If you have to "jump ship," which I do NOT recommend now, at least go with a Nikon because, like Canon, they offer a multitude of different lenses and accessories at various price levels commensurate with your budget and level of expertise.
Don't limit your horizons. Enhance them and grow with them! Isn't that why you want a FF to begin with?

Secondly check out the Big 4 on-line photo stores. B&H, Adorama, Cameta and Roberts. None of these will lead you wrong and have great customer service. Many of them have same as cash financing (PayPal/Bill Me Later) so it's easy to get exactly what you want.

For any given photographer a "better" camera will probably result in better pictures. However, the "better" camera may depend completely on the type of photographs he/she takes. A landscape photographer may consider more Megapixels to equate to 'better'. A wildlife photographer would consider 'better' to mean faster AF, larger buffer etc. However, a mediocre photographer will probably find that a 'better' camera just makes it easier for him to continue taking mediocre pictures. A truly skilled photographer will find less improvement with a more capable camera. His/her photographs will continue to be good but getting them will be less difficult. Basically a better camera may make your pictures better, but it won't make you a better photographer.

Moose,

The photo you used as a sample has no EXIF image data attached, so I must use only what I can see on the scree as to what is happening to your sharpness.

It looks like in your effort to stop camera movement and subject movement you increase the shutter speed to freeze the motion; while this will perform the task you seek it will ignore the narrow Depth Of Field (DOF) for your lens.

With a narrow DOF (f/2.0) your range of sharp focus might be around 1/2 inch. If all is stable you might get the petals of one bloom in focus, but everything else will be soft focus. For your purposes your DOF must include the distance from camera to subject and from a point selected on the chosen subject and a distance in front of that subject and behind the subject. Therefore, if you selected the edge of a petal you needed sufficient DOF to cover 1/8 inch in front of that petal and 4 inches behind that petal.

Shutter speed will freeze camera and subject lateral motion, but will not freeze soft focus caused by any motion that changes the distance between camera and subject. In order to accomplish what you desire you will need a faster shutter speed (1/500sec.) and a much greater DOF on the aperture for the lens (f/16 or greater).

There are a few ways to accomplish this; increase the ISO (sensor sensitivity) to ISO=3200, place camera on a solid object, use a shutter cable release, and spend the time to set-up and use a tripod. Increasing the ISO will enable you to increase the shutter speed to freeze lateral motion, increase the aperture to gain DOF, but will also increase the digital noise the sensor will insert into the photo as electrical noise.

Your best option is to spend the cash on a good tripod and allocate the time to set it up correctly and use it for those hand held pictures you cannot capture now.

Good shooting,

Michael G