There seems to be a misconception, at least among amateurs, that there is a single best camera, tripod, brand of lens, and etcetera. This is not at ALL true. Photographers doing different kinds of photography use ENTIRELY different equipment. Not just different brands, but completely different KINDS of cameras, tripods, lenses, and etcetera. Also, high end professional equipment is VERY different from amateur or entry level equipment.

For instance, if you are doing studio photography, you will want as heavy a tripod as you can possibly get. A 200-pound steel monster mounted on casters would not be unusual. I wouldn't recommend taking it on a mountain backpacking trip though. For that, a lightweight titanium, carbon fiber or aluminum/magnesium alloy tripod would make infinitely better sense. Using an 8x10 field camera for sports photography would not be the act of an entirely sane individual either, although it would be a good choice for landscapes or architectural photography.

Since this is so, before anyone here can even BEGIN to give you an intelligent answer about what kind of equipment it would be best for you to get, it is absolutely necessary for him/her first to have some kind of idea of what you are planning to do with it, and what kind of accessory equipment you are going to need. Otherwise you can pretty much depend on getting the kind of answer that you can take with a very large grain of salt.

SO -- when asking, please include the following information:

1. What kind of subjects interest you most (formal "head and shoulders" portraits, landscapes, fauna, macro, nudes and full length portraits, or something else). For example, someone doing architectural or landscape photography will probably want a head on his tripod that contains a bubble level or two. It helps to make sure your vertical lines and horizontal lines really ARE vertical and horizontal. On the other hand, people almost never stand perfectly straight, so having a built-in level would not be necessary if you were shooting people. In this case, it would be better to go by eye. On the other hand, if you are doing one kind of people photography, a rangefinder might be your best choice. For other types of people photography, SLRs or view cameras would be better choices. And so on.

2. What is your budget? It isn't going to do much good to recommend a $20,000 Hasselblad H2D to someone with a budget of $400.

3. Film or digital? Bear in mind that a basic entry level DSLR camera will require a budget of about five or ten times what you can get away with when buying a good film camera.

4. What lenses do you want? A landscape photographer's lenses of choice will usually be considerably of wider angle than a portrait photographer's to name just one example.

5. What format? This is going to have a strong impact on the maximum size of the prints you can make, so another way of asking the same question is -- how big are the prints you want to make? Also, the size of the negative (or sensor) has some effect on how SHARP the images will be. This holds true with both digital and film cameras. You can not get away with making prints from 35mm film, for example, that are as big as those you can make from medium or large format film.

I have found, based on my own experience, that as a general rule (there are a bare handfull of rather expensive exceptions), most DSLRs (and ALL entry level DSLRs) are small format and have about the same print size limitations as you will run into with most ISO 400 35mm films. In other words, most DSLRs and 35mm SLR cameras perform fine up until you start making prints larger than somewhere in the neighborhood of 11x14 inches. This is where you really start seeing differences. If you plan to make prints larger than that, you wold be better advised to get a medium format camera (either film or high end digital)or a large format film camera.

6. Will you be using it indoors or outdoors? For indoor use, pretty much the bigger and heavier the better. Heavier equipment is more stable. If you can roll it around and don't have to carry it, then by all means go for the 400-pound camera stand and a 20-pound steel view camera. You run into a lot of trade-offs in photography, but there is no sense trading stabilty for light weight if you don't have to. For outdoor use though, where you may have to hump a largish pack of equipment over rough terrain for a considerable distance, a compromise IS necessary. Then you should go for the most lightweight equipment that you can get away with -- and still have enough stability that you can rely on it for getting shots that are not blurred.

7. Are you an amateur or a professional? If you are only going to be making prints that are 8x10 or 11x14 inches, then you don't really need a Hasselblad, a Linhof or an Arca Swiss. Any halfway good Canon, Nikon, Pentax, or any other decent brand of camera will do fine. If you are going to be making prints that are 4x5 FEET though, then you might give a lot more serious consideration to one of the previously mentioned (and far more expensive) brands.

As for other equipment, well, amateurs can get away with a whole lot more than pros can. Amateurs can get by fine for years with just halogen lights, for example. A pro often needs to have a variety of lights, including complete sets of both strobes and tungsten. An amatuer can get by with the meter in his/her camera. A pro needs a good handheld meter (or two -- or three). And so on.

In short, there is no way to answer those "What's the best <insert type of equipment here>?" questions, without knowing what the person asking will be doing with it. Any definitive answer given to these types of questions, without first acquiring this information, does a disservice to the person asking -- and reveals the person who is answering to be an idiot.