>>4399998I'm likely going to get something pretty cheap with a kit lens to start with and I also plan to get a 50mm 1.8 soon after.
The processing steps you mentioned don't seem to be too difficult at all. Maybe I'm overthinking things.
As for the flash I was planning to get something fairly decent when I do get one, probably for around $100 like picrel. On my Minolta cameras I use a 360PX flash which has a guide number of 36 but it is a film-era flash and I don't know if it would burn out an EOS camera. I also thought I could try to use that as an off-camera flash but I have no idea how to do that yet.
I might try to do indoor studio-ish work at some point but I think what I'll mostly end up doing is outdoor portraits on my college campus or at various nearby locations (beaches, parks, etc.) so they'll be planned and I can bring some stuff, but I also won't want to carry around too much heavy crap.
When you talk about rectance diffusers do you mean the small ones that clip to the front of the flash, or the larger softbox sort of things that you put on to the flash head? I also already have a tripod.
