If I were you, I would invest in a backdrop and lighting first - if you are a beginner, you might want to start with continuous lighting.  It's a little easier to learn from.

Don't bother with your on-camera flash...they are pretty worthless.

And wait on the lens.  You can accomplish a lot with your kit lens for now, but you won't accomplish much without a good backdrop or lighting.

If you are an EBAY shopper these people have about anything you will need for lighting.
I've bought several items from then in the past.

http://shop.ebay.com/cbstudio/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

I doubt you'll find it much cheaper. LOL just make sure that's what you want, that's a lot of lighting.

sorry am just really confused

what about strobe vs. continuous lighting.

Your local camera shop will most likely have paper backdrops for sale. Mine sold me 9ft of 10ft wide paper for $35.

I hang it from rail of PVC pipe that cost me about $5 in parts to build.

I started with $25 work lights from home depot. It's harsh lighting but I diffused it by hanging super thin white cloth in front to soften it up quite a bit. I used two lights, one(key) light to provide the main light, then another light with slightly thicker cloth to make it less bright as the fill light, then I mounted a halogen bulb above on the rail for hair lighting.

Everything together for my basic continuous lighting setup was less than $100.

I even used a walmart tripod and invested in an opetka wireless remote. +$45 for those two.

Now I've moved on to strobing(using flashes mounted on stands), but it worked well for a start.

Besides, learning how to setup your lighting is half the battle.

Deep what is the big urgency to spend so much on clicking your own pictures :S
If you tell us why your doing what your doing then we might be able to give you a better option.


Are you an actor who wants his head shots done for free ? Or a passionate photographer who just wants to experiment [and has a lot of cash] ?

Basically give us an idea as to where are you goin with all this.