Doled out the dough for a Canon EOS D30 w/ 28-135mm zoom lens today.. I'm pretty handy with a point&shoot but this is major step up for me. Any thoughts, tips etc. are much appreciated..
There is the Brentwood Camera Club which meets once a month. They have a few professional photographers in the group. I am sure you could pick up some tips from them. I know you can go to a meeting as a guest. Here is a link to their website http://www.brentwoodcameraclub.org/joomla/
we got a 20D a few months back ,but haven't really done much with it manually , we're merely playing around with it occasionally and continuing to use a Panasonic Lumix because it's handier. Indoor, Sports and Nightime shots are challenging ,but can be had. It helps to have some intermediate knowledge of manual digital photography if you're going after custom shots and there's a few real good books specifically on the 30D at Metro libraries the first thing I wanna do before I blow through alot of shots is to dump the kit lens and get a good wide angle and about a 300mm zoom .... then we go nuts it's worth mentioning even if you're not likely to reach it , there is a limit to the number of shots DSLR's can take due to failure of the gate . it's a high number but extended use of fast frame shooting will obviously get you there quicker