VERY nice work !!
I am fighting camera envy . . =(

Dear Santa Claus, for Christmas I would like a Nikon D90...

Ah, a plan . . . thanks . . . ;D

I recently got a Nikon D5000 and have been snapping photos ever since. I've got a lot I need to upload, but older stuff is on Flickr.
I'm still learning, so don't expect these to be that great.

So I was playing with the camera in the room with the lights off and with the iPhone as the light source and came out with this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cw8/4951278588/#/
And then I made more letters and expanded it into something more useful:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cw8/4967253001/

I usually don't like the light-painting, but I like your second photo.

I'm such a noob, I don't even know the term for it is light-painting lol

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EDIT: Why does new post add to my old existing post instead of adding a new one?

Wonder if the photography experts are still here. I bought a 550D with the 18mm-135mm kit lens and the 50mm f1.8 prime II at a really cheap price. Now I'm looking at UWA lenses since landscapes were the thing that brought me into photography more than 10 years back. But I can't decide between these 3 lenses:

Canon EFS 10-22mm
Sigma 10-22mm
Tokina 11-16mm f2.8

I'm leaning towards the Sigma.

I'd recommend against the Canon EFS if you've got even the slightest suspicion that you might move to a full frame sensor at some point in the future. And given the way they've come down in price over the last decade, they're likely to be affordable before that lens falls apart.
What sorts of photos are you into? Just be mindful that if you need long lenses or high ISO settings that the Nikon range tends not to be very good for that. But for standard ranges and more usual sized lenses they're perfectly respectable.

Fuji tends to be quite good for individuals that want to take portraits as they tend to use a sensor array that's better for skin tones.

And Canon is, and likely for a good long while, the company of choice for long lenses and high ISO settings.

I use a Canon 5D Mark II. 21.1 megapixels - due to the fact that I sell prints online.

Very expensive, but so worth it. At the moment I'm slightly distracted and running around but I will sit down and go through this thread properly later and give as much advice as I can...

For now, here is my website

http://edan-chapman.artistwebsites.com/

The newest ten or fifteen are taken with the 5D 2, before that, generally with my old (and lost) Olympus 1020u or Sony 3.1 MP. Interestingly enough, the Sony had FAR SUPERIOR images (just lower megapixels that's all) than the Olympus despite being about eight years older!

LENS ARE EVERYTHING.

Had to compress and resize the image so apologies if it's not as exquisite as it should be - but yes, great camera.

Well not quite everything, the sensor technology that Canon uses is simply amazing. I'm astonished at the low light performance of the newer bodies. Which I suspect has somethng to do with your choice of body. Canon excels at high ISO settings.

I'll probably replace my 10D when I can get a full frame sensor for under $2k, although I might not, I might stick with the APS-C form factor as I've grown rather used to it.

But, as you suggest, the investment is in the lens, not the body, and for what I paid for my 70-200 F2.8L IS, I could've bought a new body with a whole lot better sensitivity in low light.

I think you really want to revise that statement, especially considering the ISO performance and cost of the Nikon D90 when compared to the same class cameras from Canon.

Same goes even in the high end segment where the Nikon D3s manages to take cleaner images in low light than the Canon 1D MK4 and even the 5D MK2 (even though it manages to be closer).

Perhaps so but for quality, Canon wins hands down. Period.

Define quality :)

I think that at this point in time you can't go wrong with either Canon or Nikon; it all comes down to what system you find more usable (in my case Nikon won) and if you have prior investment in lens or not (you're not going to switch from Nikon to Canon or vice-versa if you have a lot of money invested in glass for that camera system).

Not really. Nikon has had trouble with noise for as long as I can recall, and that hasn't changed. A quick look at some comparison shots confirms that they haven't figured it out yet. There's a different philosophy involved which makes it look like the photos from the Nikon bodies have less noise. But from what I'm seeing, that's because the anti-noise algorithm is more aggressive and as a result the images I'm looking at definitely have less detail than the Canon does.
Nikon gear is goodb as is Canon gear. But if you're needing longer lenses or higher ISO it's really hard to beat Canon. Sports photography at the professional level is a market that's more or less completely owned by Canon, and you rarely if ever see any NIkon gear. Canon just spends more time and energy on it.

But for most people, Nikon gear is somewhere between just fine and amazing.

I think that's subjective. You can find some tests and [url=http://www.kennyloh.com/canon-vs-nikon-part-3-high-iso-performance.html]here as well as other online.

The bottom line is that the difference is negligible and the best camera is the one that works the best with you (controls, body, etc.); for some that is Nikon, for others Canon