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might be time to upgrade my own camera gear a bit -
I know that the canon/nikon battle can rage on for pages, but if you'd like to give me your opinion on what you've been using for body, telephoto lens, or what you see new that looks interesting, it would be appreciated.
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I don't know by your screen name who I'm talking to so I don't know your skill level. By my way of thinking knowing your equipment backwards and forwards so you can get the most out of it is key. A lot of the professionals would laugh at my gear, D70 and D70s bodies with a couple fast lenses and hotshoe flashes as opposed to their D3's with $2000 70-200 VRs and Norman flashes. On the other hand I get as many if not more photos in the magazines and papers as they do, many of them taken with my cheapest lens, a $160 70-300 kit lens. Every lens has a sweet spot, a range of focal lengths and settings where even the cheaper ones preform close to or equal to the big buck stuff.
Forgive me if you already know this but if not learn the affect ISO, aperture and shutter speeds have on each other. I have seen people with the best equipment money can buy but they're shooting in program mode and freezing the lettering on the tires so they car looks like it's not moving. Blurred lettering, shallow depth of field in the background, correct white balance settings, a low noise camera or some good noise reduction software, those are all important.
I don't claim to be a professional nor do I compete for sales but there are some intangibles that I think can help a photographer. If you're a good writer and can come up with a caption I think that can sometimes tip the scales in your favor. Editors are busy people and if they get six photos of the same car at a race they did not attend that caption might be what gets your photo noticed over all the others. I'm not sure what your objective is though, shoot for fun and collect photos, shoot for a publication, compete for driver card business or in my case I use the photos to supplement my writing and hopefully preserve some of what I see as a historical record.
This podcast where Chris talks about the importance of knowledge over how much one spends on equipment pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter: http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.tipsfromthetopfloor.com/tfttf498_learninglearninglearning.mp3
Stan Meissner
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