If you really want to learn photography the first thing you need is a good affordable and reliable camera. It must, and I repeat must, be able to shoot in fully manual and fully auto focus modes. (This leaves out any digital cameras on the market right now, sorry.) To really learn photography you must understand the equipment. You'll need to learn how manipulating the shutter speed, aperture, and focus will have a dramatic effect on your photos. Meters, if you have a camera that can work in a fully manual mode it should have an internal meter suitable for what you will be doing. Tripod, you're going to need one whether it's portrait work or landscapes you'll need one eventually. Luckily you don't have to spend a lot here. Just something lightweight and durable. Flash, you can buy a separate camera mounted flash, which is great if you can afford it. Consider what kind of photography that you will be doing though. If you're going to do mostly nature and landscape, you may only need the fill flash that comes with most cameras today. If you plan on doing portraiture alone you will want to consider a camera mounted flash that has an adjustable angle.

Film, film speed to be exact. Slower speeds (25 to 400) are intended for portraiture and landscape photography. Faster speeds (600 and above) are intended for actions shots and photojournalism. So first you need to know what you going out to photograph and make sure that you have the appropriate film for the job.

Now that you have the camera loaded with film consider shutter speed. Do you want to blur motion, or freeze it? If there is no motion at all what shutter speed do you need to expose the scene with natural light. From 1/60th and down to the bulb setting will blur most motion. For example if you want to blur the water in a waterfall, a setting of 1/30th should work. (You'll need a tripod though.) 1/125th is a normal setting for most shots. On many cameras the 125th setting is marked in a different color to make it obvious. If you want to freeze action you'll need to start with 1/500th and work up from there. The faster the motion the faster the shutter speed needed to stop motion. Many cameras go up to 1/2000th of a second. If you're trying to use natural light alone in a scene you will want to determine the aperture first and then see what shutter speed you need to properly expose the scene for available light. (Keep in mind sometimes there isn't enough light.)

Aperture, these are the set of numbers on your lens closest to the body of the camera. They can go from 1.8 to '22

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