Photography as a hobby: beginner's questions

[Galago]

Hi fellow Facepunch photographing friends. I'm interesting in taking up photography as a hobby, yet I know not much about it. What I do know is this: Rule of Thirds, basic composition, worms eye view, etc.

Before I go into questions, I'll tell you what I have to work with:
- Canon EOS-20D (DSLR)
- Canon Powershot Pro1
- Sony Cyber-shot T2 (ultracompact)

Questions:
- What books and tutorials would you recommend me to read?
- Do you have any tips for me?
- Is my equipment sufficient?

[DaveP]

Your equipment is more than sufficient, there's something of a big dick waving contest that starts as soon as you procure any digital gadget that has some kind of quantifiable spec (be it megapixels, zoom %'s, hard drive speed, etc.), when what you're holding in your hands is in a way one of the least important parts of the photography proccess (a paintbrush to a painter).

If you want to buy any books then Joe McNally's coffee-table-textbooks are great, The Moment it Clicks and The Hot Shoe Diaries, even though the latter is (to be expected) more about the use of off camera hot shoe flash, the Former is a great book on general photography, in a friendly-yet-helpful format that few other books come close to

Personally I learnt most stuff from just going out there and taking large amounts of photos, trawling through my thread history should be proof enough of this (and is an odd yardstick to see how I've progressed), and occassionally referring to a book that I've grabbed from the library or something (why buy it if you're only ever going to need one or two different things) on the technical aspects.

To the end of what I just said, I'm personally not a fan of more technical books, but if you [b]must[/b] have a reference to hand, Scott Kelby's books are some of the best I've read (something to the effect of [url]http://www.kelbytraining.com/product/the-scott-kelby-digital-photography-library-bundle.html[/url] is a nice place to start)

[alex9324]

I learned photography the same way as DaveP. Over the course of a year I just got better at taking photos. Then my dad noticed I wasn't that bad at photography at all, so he's been helping me study more about photography and stuff. Reading some photography books at the library can be very useful.