You might have just gotten a bad copy of the T7i. It should be every bit as sharp as the T3i in almost every situation (except maybe low-light).

I would recommend the Sony equivalent, but my experience is that people who learned on Canon are not wild about Sony anything.

Maybe take a look at the Canon M50. It is small, inexpensive, has a nice touchscreen, and it does a great job in low light.

You should be able to get a good used t2i around $150 without the lens. The lens that most people used with it was the 18-55 f/3.5 - 5.6, which should run another $90 or so.

Check the lens carefully to make sure there are no scratches or "fog" on the lens. That is a good lens for the money, but if it has fungus on the inside, then it is more-or-less worthless. The fungus can be removed, but it costs more than the lens.

When starting out, you will want a prime lens to play around with, so you might want to look at the Canon 50mm 1.8 or the 24mm 2.8 pancake, which are around $150 each. There is a 35mm for general work, but I have not ever used it. Instead, I used the 35mm 1.8 macro, which is an excellent lens, but is in the $450 range, and a beginning photographer might not want to spend that much.

The general rule of the RX100 series is that they are smaller than anything better, and better than anything smaller.

When they went from version 5 to 6, Sony got rid of the 24-70 lens, and went with a 24-200. The bigger lens is only F2.8 on the wide end, but is F4.5 on the long end. So if you shoot past 100mm much, you will want the model VI.

The lens on the V, on the other hand, is F1.8 to F2.8, so a lot of people prefer the model V, for the faster lens.

If you are shooting on a tripod, remember to turn off image stabilization. If you are using continuous autofocus on a still subject, then you might have to shoot two or three shots to avoid vibration from the focus motor.

Spend the extra money on the t7i. The tilt-swivel touchscreen alone is worth the extra expense. In addition you will get Bluetooth, on-sensor phase detect, and more accurate focus selection of moving subjects.

In the U.S., the price difference is only about $170. Unless your price difference is $300 or more, get the better camera.

"User ID" made a great point here. The Olympus OMD EM5 mk ii is the cheapest camera I know of that offers high-resolution mode. It takes two 20 MP images that are shifted by less than a pixel, and makes a composite 40mp image. The color profile of the Olympus is excellent, and the resulting files are easier to work with than you might think.

Although the camera itself is about $700, you will be able to save some money on lenses, because good MFT macro lenses are slightly less expensive than ASPC, and way less expensive than full frame. You can also adapt a manual lens, because you don't need the fast autofocus.

You can save some money on lighting by buying it used, or rigging up your own.

You are correct not to buy anything off Amazon where the person asks you to respond to an e-mail instead of to the Amazon account. This is a scam where the person takes your money and sends you a different camera.

If you complain to the vendor that listed the product for sale, you will find that the vendor's account was hacked, and that you were never dealing with that vendor at all.

There was a guy in Florida who found a bag of money sitting in the woods. It turned out to be from a bank robbery back in the 1980's, so he contacted the bank and turned the money in.

He said he just assumed there was a studio audience somewhere voting on what he should do.

I use Flickr (still). Their upload program is not particularly good, but their fees are reasonable, you can try it out for free, and you can either allow or disallow downloading.

It might be worth adding a quick note that many cameras embed their serial number in the EXIF data. Anyone who uses a stolen camera has to know how to strip the serial number out, and has to remember to do it on every picture.

Otherwise, sooner or later, someone will share one of your photos on the web, and the EXIF data will let the original owner know that you stole their camera.

The "18" end of the 18-70 will let you get group shots without having to stand too far back. The "70" end will let you get head-and-shoulders (or tighter) portraits. 70-300 is too long for indoors, unless you are in the very back of a large church.

Pay close attention to light levels. If you are shooting on "auto", the D70 will try to slow your shutter speed down to 1/60 in low light, which is too slow for hand-held. (A 1/60 picture will come out a little blurry even for people with steady hands.) Instead, try Shutter priority, and set your shutter for 1/120 (or so) for people standing still, and 1/180 for people who are moving a bit. This might push your ISO up around 1600 on that lens, but don't worry, it will still look better than a blurry picture at low ISO.

People complain about ISO 800 on the D70, but in my experience, at 800 you will get noise in the shadows, but as long as you keep the subject well-lit, you are fine.

If your ISO is getting up past 1600, then you need a flash. (The D70 has some color noise past ISO 1600, and your pictures will look "splotchy".) The best bet is to keep an external strobe flash on the camera that you can angle up toward the ceiling, (and take pictures closer than 3 meters.) It is better to have a big flash and not need it than to need a bigger flash and not have it.

Most of the new Sony cameras are better in low light than the D70, but not so much better that it is worth using a camera you aren't comfortable with. The D70 has fantastic color and huge pixels, so even their grain pattern looks great.

The only warning is to remember that the D70 is a 6 MP camera, so you don't have much room to crop. Frame each shot as well as you can before you take the picture. You can always back up and take a second shot, but don't take photos that you plan to crop.

I am still not sure what people are doing with all these 1200 mm (equiv.) lenses on the market.

It is basically a small telescope. Even if you are shooting a relatively slow moving object, like the moon, it is hard to get enough stability to be useful.

If you are trying your hand at sports photography from the cheap seats, for example, the movement of the stadium is usually enough to blur your pictures.

If the client pays for a picture, then I would provide a version with no watermark. If you are providing free drafts, or samples, or doing volunteer work, then put your watermark right across their shirt .

I actually got a rolling hockey bag, and use it to carry around my old camera bag, plus the tripods and lighting equipment. The hockey bag is the right height for the light stands, and the old camera bag provides sufficient padding to protect the cameras.

I wish I could up-vote replies. Linda included an example in this post that works perfectly.