Photography is a dangerous hobby. You start with “all I really need is a good entry-level dSLR,” but right away you realize that a good camera’s no good without a decent lens. “But hey,” you think, “that should be enough, right?” You grit your teeth and swipe the card, ka-ching, $750, and voilla, you’re happy for a while. But this is just the top of the hill.

It doesn’t take long for you to start feeling the limits of your gear. Sure, you can get great results when the light’s good or the subject’s still, but when your kid’s running around in the living room and the light’s bad you’ve just gotta pop up the flash. After a few tries you realize that the built-in flash on your fancy dSLR isn’t a lot better than the one on your old point-n-shoot. Everything still ends up flattened. Blagh. The snowball starts rolling.

Once again you swipe the card — you pick up a nice, fast 50mm lens (a bargain at $120). Now you’ve got a better range, you’re taking shots where you couldn’t before, but guess what? At f/1.8 you’ve got a 2cm depth of field. You’d better hope you can nail the focus just right, or you’re outta luck. Plus, there are times when the light’s just not there, even at f/1.8. Oh dear, the snowball’s rolling faster now.

So you pick up a good flash ($190). But you make the mistake of reading strobist and start thinking about off-camera flash, so the snowball grows by another $60 in RF triggers and diffusers. (We’ll be generous and assume you didn’t get the stands, umbrellas, and gels that you wanted so badly but couldn’t justify to the spousal unit.)

I think you get the picture, but I’d just like to take a moment to enumerate a few more of the items that will contribute to that snowball’s mass. Mind you, I’m using “ghetto-gear” prices here. Buying actual reputable-brand gear means these prices go up, often significantly.

• You’ve gotta have a telephoto lens for birds and trips to the zoo. Something that at least gets out to 200mm. ($250 at least. Probably more like $450.)
• It would be nice to have some teleconverters for that lens to give you even more reach on the cheap. ($60-200)
• Ooh, macro’s fun. Close-up lenses are reasonably cheap ($40) and so are extension tubes ($85).
• Ah yes, the tripod! All the pros say it’s critical to have one, and a good one at that. Why, you’d be a fool to skimp here! ($250. Yes, you’re skimping. You’re poor. Boo hoo.)
• You really need at least a circular polarizing filter (multi-coated, of course) to get those magical cobalt-blue skies. ($75)
• Don’t forget about software! Photoshop is “only” $300 with the educational discount. You might be able to make do with Bibble Pro (great stuff, $120) and Krita ($0, thank God for open-source), but you know you’ll buy PS eventually.
• Another thing, if you care about getting good prints you have to have accurate color during your editing. That means you definitely need a calibrator for your monitors. ($80)
• Oh yeah, those RAW files? They take up space. You’ll be needing more hard drives at $100 each. (Yes, drives. You do make backups, right?)

But do you know what the funny thing is? You still truly believe that once you have all those things, once that snowball has reached some ideal size, it will just stop! Really!

Dear friend, the snowball never stops.