Originally Posted by
955i_Triple
As well as being a photographer I am also the National Sales manager for a large Photographic distributor. I deal a lot with colleges and kit out students with their first lot of gear. The college will provide a list of equipment that is needed to start the course. All colleges are different dependant on what gear they use themselves. This means the students can use the equipment the college has to save themselves money. As already mentioned the Canon EOS 1000d is a great starter camera and you should find them 2nd hand for around your budget. They will take all the Canon EF lenses and there are lots of them 2nd hand on the market. Try and stick to genuine Canon lenses if you can. There are some of the baby Nikons around too but you have to watch out as the prices tend to be higher and repair charges are nasty too.
Focal lengths of lenses will vary. If you are using an older standard zoom like say a 35-70mm it wont give you that exact focal length on a newer DSLR. The is because the sensor size within the camera isnt the same size as a 35mm frame (unless you spend a serious amount of money) so you will get a crop effect on the image. Tech bit coming sorry! On any 35 mm film camera, a 28 mm lens is a wide-angle lens, and a 200 mm lens is a long-focus lens. Now that digital cameras have replaced 35 mm cameras, there is no uniform relation between the focal length of a lens and the angle of view, since the size of the camera sensor also determines angle of view, and sensor size is not standardised as film size was. The 35 mm equivalent focal length of a particular lens–sensor combination is the focal length that one would need for a 35 mm film camera to obtain the same angle of view. Most commonly, the 35 mm equivalent focal length is based on equal diagonal angle of view. Alternatively, it may sometimes be based on horizontal angle of view. Since 35 mm film is normally used for images with an aspect ratio (width-to-height ratio) of 3:2, while many digital cameras have a 4:3 aspect ratio, which have different diagonal-to-width ratios, these two definitions are often not equivalent.
In short 1000d would, in my opinion be great for her as a starter. If you want to chat further just PM me and ill give you my number! ;D