What Camera should I purchase?

[oseymour]

I am starting an online store and I can really beat my competitors by having better photos than they do.

I am selling boots jeans on one site and baby clothes and accessories for the other.

my budget for a cameria is about 1,000.

I was looking at the nikon d40. the pictures look good and it is very affordable...what do you recommend I buy? If I need to I will invest in a good camera?

[Frog]

Personally, I think a dslr camera is a waste for on line advertising pics.
There are many point and shoots that will take good photos for posting in a web site.
Look at pics posted on the threads here and try to tell which ones are taken with dslr or p&s.
Learning what makes a photo good is more important and you'll be able to accomplish that with a good p&s. I would look for one that has a hot shoe for a flash and make sure it has a tripod socket.

[KenB]

I think properly setting up and lighting what you want to shoot is going to be WAY more important than what you use to shoot it with. If you have a decent P&S, I'd invest more in lighting/softboxes/tripod than I would a camera.

[jgredline]

I agree with Frog and KenB
For online stuff, even a good 3.2 megapixle will get you by.
''IF'' that is your sole purpose, then I would be looking at the Fuji point and shoots and with the money you save get a ''good'' tripod, set up s decent stdio with good lighting..

[fx101]

Forget a DSLR if you have 1000 dollars total to spend for this. In this case the resolution and such is unimportant. Invest that in a good lighting setup if you really want to blow out your competitors.

First: you want one or two monolights. I personally don't do studio-work, but from reading, it seems like the Flashpoint II monolight is a good choice. Now, how this works is you want to set the flash off in your camera, and these will fire as soon as your flash fires. You need to meter manually however. Get a few umbrellas as well and a drape and you have yourself a basic studio to shoot stuff in.