[stupot]

Welcome keffus,

Good advice there from Graham, as for using a UV filter well the purists out there would say and quite rightly that putting any extra glass or filter in front of your lens is going to degrade image quality to some extent, in real terms though for the majority of amateurs learning about this craft you'd be hard pushed to notice a difference in picture quality. I use one on a few of my lenses purely to protect my investment, i recently went out early to take some sunrise shots, got set up near the car as it was still quite dark, had my camera on tripod ready and walked the short distance to where i was going to take shots from and then woooosh over i went! tripped over a small chain running along the beach. Luckily i managed to save camera from hitting anything but you can see it only takes a moment have a momentary lapse and damaged a lens. Don't buy cheap though on a UV filter get a good quality one.

As for what to concentrate on well just experiment, you soon find an area that suits you and you like, for me its landscapes which i seem to do OK at, producing the odd decent shot! but portraits i cant take one for love nor money.

Asking questions on here or even googling terms helps, there really isn't a silly question so ask away! Oh and the two bits of equipment i recommend you invest in at some point if you haven't already done so (you don't have to spend much) is a tripod and a cable release, will be handy for most types of photography!

Happy snapping.