I have bought most of my camera gear off of ebay. I am about to start selling the excess.

1. List each item separately.
2. Describe it in detail as to condition.
3. Use photos of the actual item.
4. Show the front lens and the rear lens.
5. Show the front and rear caps.
6. If it is under $100 put a BUY IT NOW price on it.
7. Unless it is a high dollar, odd ball item, a three or four day auction is usually good.
8. Have your auction end early on a week night for best results.
9. Give ACCURATE shipping costs.
10. If you list on ebay and accept Paypal, you are paying 13% in fees and this 13% also goes against the cost of shipping!
11. Try it on Craigslist or similar first.

Go on to Craigslist and find a USED point and shoot for say $50. Go get a basic photography book from BN.com used for about $6. Read the book, cover to cover. Read your camera manual, cover to cover. Now go practice. Reread both books. Now go practice some more learning from your mistakes. ONCE you get to the point where you can no longer take BETTER shots with the point and shoot, get a DSLR, used, with one zoom lens and one prime lens. If you have read your basic photography book through twice you will know what I mean by this. Get your second book on photography and a good guide to your specific camera, both used, both about $6 each on BN.COM. This is working for me.

You can get a refurbished Nikon 3100 with an 18-55 and a 55-200 lens for about $500. Used, even less. Start there.

Get the TV. I use a Samsung SyncMaster T260HD that will run my DVD player, hook to cable so that I can watch HDTV during lunch or coffee breaks, and has DVI-D for the computer for my photo and video editing. The cost of that HD tuner is about $50. So spend the extra. Image and color are the same.

It depends on what you are shooting. I have Nikon D90 and have standardized on four lenses:

35mm 1.8 G for portrait work.
18-55mm VR for group and indoor architect work.
55-200mm VR for group and outdoor work and landscapes.
80-200 f2.8 for action photography in theaters for dance.

If you read the reviews the 18-200 is a great all around lens. I have shot dance with the 55-300 and it is a POOR lens. Get rid of it! The 18-300 is a fairly expensive lens. How are you going to use the additional 100mm? A lot of these zooms go very soft at the long end. Since I shoot action, I would keep the 18-200 for general purposes, and get the WONDERFUL Nikon 80-200 f2.8. It can be had used for around $600 or $1100 new. It is a REAL pro lens that will serve you well for a decade. It will autofocus on a D7000 as well. DUMP that doggy 55-300. Add yourself a 35mm portrait lens and you are all set.

This is easy. As a computer guy turned video guy who is now learning photography (again!) it all depends on your image and your final product.

A good, high quality magazine image is printed at 1200 dots per inch. The more inches the more dots.

Take a standard head shot at 12 Megapixels. If you print this out at 4800 dpi X 2400 dpi, you get an 11.5 (approximately) megapixel image. The printer is not capable of reproducing the image at a higher resolution. If you took this SAME picture at 36 megapixels, it would still print out the same!. The ONLY good higher resolution images does is for what I call SPY photos. Instead of shooting one person's head shot at 12 megapixels, you shoot a group shot at 36 megapixels. You can now crop individuals to create 8 X 10 at 4800 X 2400 dpi to end up with an 11.5 megapixel print. Most monitors are in the 72 pixels per inch range so it will not be any clearer on screen. Unless you are doing some very heavy duty cropping, higher megapixel imagers only give you a bigger file to hang on to.

Contact www.mtdigital.com. They specialize in this service. Takes LOTS of equipment and time to do it right.

A BETTER Camera DOES NOT make you a better photographer!

Here is what I tell people. Tiger Woods and I have ONE thing in common: we both own a set of golf clubs. I can get the MOST perfect set of clubs that could be custom tailored to me. Tiger goes and gets a set up clubs from the Thift Store, $1 per club barrel. We play each other. Are you going to bet that I will win? Not likely.

Being able to USE the equipment is what makes the difference. Unless there is a major defect in your equipment, oil spots on the sensor, it is YOUR skill that determines the outcome.