Unless your mum means "working as a photographer" (the odds of anyone
earning $1500 with their camera in the first year are very slim), I
think she's got the right idea. I think $489 is about as cheap as any
DSLR is going to get any time in the next few years, & not having a
car will keep you motivated to save some of your wages. Just watch out
for the temptation to blow your savings on new lenses & memory cards.

If I listened to my mum, I'd have a house and a pension, besides the wife
and kids, or maybe the wife and kids would have the house and ... nevermind.

If you put that $500 into stocks you'd have a couple million bucks by the
time you are 50 or something like that, geez I wish I took my folks
seriously when I was a teen.  what was it, 100 a month turns into a million
bucks.

I don't suppose it would do any good to suggest that you listen to your
folks, they are smarter than you think.

guys without a car basically don't exist in modern american life.

4 or 5 mp is basically enough, though a dslr is cooler.  what do you get
paid for 'stock' shots these days?  a buck here and there?   Shutter lag
didn't bother me, though I spent 20 years shooting with a medium format on a
tripod all that time so the lag wasn't that much different from the slow
thoughtful pace that using a big manual camera required.

A $1,500 down payment on a car? Plus payments, plus insurance... I would
look for an older used car. I would buy the camera first, but wait as prices
will slip down a bit soon. I expect price drops on the Pentax *ist DL2, the
Nikon D50 and D70s and the Canon Rebel XT.

Car first...it'll get you to and from a job that'll get you the cash for
your dslr.
Usually passive stuff (post and wait) never amounts to much of anything...

Disclaimer: Who the heck am I to tell you what to do?  But you asked, so
here's my opinion. :)

Cars keep on costing after you buy them and if you buy the car you may never
buy the camera.

So my free advice is to buy the camera and find a friend with a car and make
him your drive-me-everywhere-I-want-to-go buddy. :)

You'd be well served to buy yourself a car, so that you can get a job
that permits you to buy what you want in photographic equipment, not
merely 'getting by' with a minimal kit.  On the other hand, you are
fooling yourself to think that $1500 buys a car, unless you settle for
a junker with tons of mileage and lots of problems.  You gotta earn a
lot more money to finish paying what the down payment started, and pay
for gas and maintenance (and when your parents turn you loose, pay the
insurance costs!)

Chicks like a guy with a car.  But they like a guy who can make them look
like a fashion model even better.  Just something to think about.

$1500 is going to get you a crappy car that you'll just have to spend more
money on (and chicks don't like a guy with a crappy car anyway).  You've
already discovered that $500 will get you a good SLR.  I'd get the camera,
get the job, and the car will come in time.

Dear Matt,

The other's are right. You should think about a car. I have a son too who is
16 and I'm having a hard time getting him to think about saving for a car.
He would rather buy skate boards, video games, and junk food!

What ever you do, be responsible and work hard. You'll appreciate what you
earn. Hope things work out for you.

Dave

Matt, think four letters:  "E.-B.A.Y." -- you can get a good deal on a
camera that's in great shape and undoubtedly at a lower price than at
Wolf's.  For that matter, the same with a car.  You're on your own about the
chicks.....LOL

I'd go for the camera and a summer job as a photographer's assistant, at a
camera store, etc.

Mike

Camera + bicycle...car = big hole to pour money into....
friends have cars.

You see a lot of photographic detail from the pace of a bicycle (no
blind spots)...and meeting girls that exercise is very cool.

And yes, yes, yes,  if you can put even 20$/mo into a DJIA index fund
you will really enjoy life not too much later....

I'll throw in what might be something of a different perspective. I'm
perhaps the youngest person replying to what you're saying (I'm nearly
24), so what I might lack in experienced wisdom I can make up for in
familiarity of situation.

You're young. You're really young. I know that coming from someone with
only 150% of your life experience that probably sounds absurd and
patronizing, but it's absolutely true. You've got alot of years ahead
of you. And the next eight will be full of more change than perhaps any
other eight in your entire life. When I was sixteen, I knew what I
wanted to do with my life: I wanted to be a stage actor. At seventeen I
got into a highly-exclusive summer program for theater, the kind where
getting in is a big deal, an accomplishment, and a confirmation of
talent (they took nine people out of an applicant pool pushing 500).
While there I realized that, while good, I wasn't up to par with two of
my peers. But I had an ability to see and understand things on a larger
scale, so I aimed at becoming a theater director. I did that for my
senior year, got into college, and decided to try film, knowing that I
could change back to theater if I wanted to. So at age 18 I decided to
become a film director. I learned more about filmmaking, got a ton of
experience, and found that I loved cinematography. Now I'm a
cinematographer, with more than 30 projects on film under my belt, and
I've finally settled down. Even still, I'm always tempted by the allure
of going out on my own and taking pictures, and becoming a
photographer. Real photography (making choices about exposure, lensing,
shutter, iris) is something I had no exposure to prior to learning
filmmaking and is truly an outgrowth of my cinematography.

I bore you with all of this to drive home two points, both of which may
seem to contradict one another. The first, from a practical standpoint,
is that you want to be a photographer now, but that could change in the
next year, and again the year after that. This isn't a criticism of
your drive, your talent, or your devotion, because I had all three when
it came to acting eight years ago. You just find new things and you
move on.

Counter to that, I went to high school in Tennessee and had no exposure
to real photography until I was older. Had I, at age 16, discovered
photography, I might have skipped the intermediate steps from actor to
cinematographer/photographer and just jumped head first into
photography, loved it, and been happy. You're a sixteen year old that
seems to have aspirations beyond Friday night's after-game parties and
passions beyond American Idol. I probably don't have to tell you that
that's somewhat rare. So my advice is this: if you can get by without
the car and can get gainful employ without a car, buy the camera now,
or soon. Relentlessly pursue the things you love, because you'll only
test the depth of your passion if you jump in head-first. And as long
as you don't break the bank or come to loathe and despise photography,
you'll be served well owning a dSLR even if only for a hobby.

Before you commit to the D50, however, look at the other options: the
D70, D70s, Canon Rebel XT, and Canon EOS 20D. All of these cameras can
be had relatively cheaply and are great cameras, but each offers you
something different. I imagine that your budget will leave it between
the D50 and the Rebel XT, but as someone who blindly jumped into the
D70 and then, a year later, bought a Canon 20D, I can tell you that
this is no decision to shake off. In the digital age, Canon and Nikon
are becoming more-radically different and you need to see which one
serves your tastes. I found out later than I should have that Canon
suited mine; my best friend is a Nikon user and given his photographic
tastes, it is the right call for him.

More than that though, I can't stress this last point enough. Back in
the day, before DSLRs, when I bought my first film SLR, it was common
on usenet to find people telling you that no matter what, you needed to
get a fast 50mm prime. "Get the zoom lens if you really think you'll
need it," they'd say, "but you'll learn more with a 50mm prime." I
ignored this advice. I bought my Sigma 28-200 and I had so much range!
And I didn't learn anything from my own still photography, other than
some composition.

Cinematography is where I learned actual things about lens selection,
focus, composition, etc... all of the things a fast normal lens will
teach you. It led me to buy that 50mm prime, which is what I used for
most of my favorite shots from that era. So by all means, buy that zoom
lens if you really think you'll need it. But buy a fast 35mm prime (if
you go D50) or 28mm prime (if you go Rebel XT). f/2.0 or faster. You'll
learn more. For one, you'll learn alot more with a truly fast lens, and
any zoom you'll be buying won't be fast. I promise you, I had that
18-70 with my D70, and it is a fine piece of lens, but it isn't fast
enough to bring to a party and snap interesting pictures. You can't
learn good selective focusing if you can only open up to 4. And once
you've gotten used to shooting with a normal lens, you'll have a better
idea of what you like... do you find yourself wanting to be closer or
wider?

And finally, shoot RAW and learn that end of things. That's the second
half of the equation these days, much as darkroom work used to be.

Good luck making these decisions, enjoy your photography, and enjoy
high school.

Will

Your mother is probably right.  The straightest line to your goal might
involve patience in order to have a reasonable quality kit at the end of
the summer as well as a good 'ole clunker to ride out to the subject matter.

You could also use just a few dollars to pick up a used manual SLR with
a 50mm f/1.8 lens and invest in 20 rolls of film and development over
the summer to develop your eye and learn exposure basics.  Then when you
get the DSLR at the end of the summer you will be experienced with your
eye and ready to really experiment freely in digital.

Buy the nastiest/cheapest grocery store ISO 100 36 frame negative film
(3.99 for 4 or 5 rolls) and get 4x6 prints (1 of).  If you work at it,
you can learn a lot in these 720 or so  exposures.  Maybe do your last 5
rolls in slide film which requires more exposure skill and will develop
your abilty to read the light.

Your local library may have some photography books.  Soak them up.  If
there are some wedding photogs near you, offer to be a pack-mule slave
for free at a couple weddings in exchange for the experience.  They will
want you to dress appropriately and 9 out of 10 of them will say no
(it's more work to coordinate you than to do it themselves), but worth a
try in any case.

MO

Cheers,
Alan