Also, I'm quite happy to 'bodge' things if it saves a bit of cash and still gets results, I reckon there will be something pleasing about getting a 'result' this way.
YES! Stick with that idea! It was actually my muse for the morning, ruing the way society as a whole has become addicted to pre-packeged, homologated consumerism, and SO many questions on here are depressing "What should I buy?! and "What's gadget will get me what I hope for?" every-one expecting a magic button to do anything and everything they want, and not have to learn anything, apply any thought, know-how or skill to the job... let alone old fashioned make-do-an-mend improvisation....
ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT?
A Camera.... yup, think that about covers it...... well....OK.....
1. BATTERIES
Electric picture makers are a bit stumped to make pictures without electric; spare batteries are then pretty handy
2/ MEMORY CARDS
Got camera, got electric... all good, but not if you have no-where to store photo.
This leads onto -> Long term storage, Display, and archiving: - and here, you DON'T so much need equipment or gadgets, what you need before anything else is a STRATEGY.
A pictures whole reason to be is to be looked at.... so right at the very beginning, you need a bit of thought; And that is 'Who?', 'Why?' and 'What? Who is going to look at the photo, why will they look at it, and what is going to interest or inform them?
If photo doesn't have an audience to look at it, if the audience has no reason to look at it, and it doesn't offer them something, either interest, entertainment or education, then there is very little reason for that photo to be..... remember and apply that thought, and what gear you use to get a photo doesn't actually matter that much; you can have the most fantastic camera money can buy, you can have a gadget bag full of every piece of equipment known to camera-kind.... you can take perfectly composed, perfectly exposed pictures, with all the artistic excelence you can muster.... if no one looks, if no one has reason to look, and they have no interest in seeing.... all rather redundant.....
What matters is NOT even the THE PICTURE... but the picture's reason to be..... park that nugget at the very top of the list.
Back to Storage, Display and Archiving..... if advice on batteries and SD cards heeded, if advice on thinking about Who, Why, What, remembered, you get pictures... so then what you going to do with them?
They need to be seen, you have to have that audience in mind, so how are you going to deliver them the picture?
Once upon a time, we had few options, we made a 'print', and that print was put in a frame, and sat in the matle-piece, maybe hung on the wall or put in an album. People were shown the picture when they came to visit, either pointed to on the wall or shelf, or handed the album. In later years, Envelopes of holiday snaps would come back from Tru-Print, and be passed around the living room or works canteen etc. Sometimes, a projector would be sat up and a family or office subjected to a slide-show in a darkened room..... THESE are still possible.... and in some situations possibly the most appropriate way to deliver a picture...
But we now have digital delivery; pictures can be transmitted via cell-phone, over the internet, published on-line.. but the audience is still the audience, and they still need to look, have reason to look, and interest to look.... so who are you going to show pictures to, how are you going to get them to them, and what will they be interested in?
And modern society is inundated by pictures.... in my Grandfather's time, a photo was still a relatively rarity; there may have been a dozen in a household, not many more. By my mother's time? There were a lot more, and most homes had a family album; by my time? Happy Snaps were doing the rounds of the play-ground in the Boots envelopes.
BUT, not all pictures are photo's... pick up a book or magazine from my Grandad's day, illustrations were few, and usually line drawings; by my Mothers, they were more common, and occasional photo's appeared among the drawings; by my childhood, photo's were breeding like rabbits, and on hoardings outside the newsagents; every page of a newspaper had to have at least one if not three photo's, and they were starting to print them in colour! Adverts were every where; every house had a TV.... the AUDIENCE was becoming rather blase about pictures......
And now? They are every where, and so over-populated, not only do they have to plaster bus-stops with them to find space for them all, they are painted on the buses, on the telephone man's van, even the ruddy plumbers! And more! So much competition for picture space now, watch a bus stop for three minutes and the pictures changes! There's four of the ruddy things on every bill-board!
Chucking a dozen snaps up on Farce-Broke? Well, they might get ported to the 'News-Feed' of any-one on your Friends list; "cjnow has just posted a new photo of his breakfast at tiffanies".. but do you want them to see them? Do they want to see them? Will they give them more than a passing glance? And how many of those "likes" are just Pavlov-Dog responses because they phone has bleeped?
SO! STRATEGY... and the issues are linked. Start with the audience, and use that to guide what you take photo's of. That audience may be the exclusive group of one... you..... but its still an audience. So why have you taken that photo? Why, and as importantly, how, will you look at it? And why are you interested?
But start there; you can look at your photo on the preview screen on the back of the camera; interest might be no more than did these settings work, and after that... it might have little reason to be.. you might immediately delete from the SD card.... no further thought required...... alternatively and more likely, you will want to take it home; look at it later, probably on a bigger screen, like a 17" computer monitor or large screen TV... now we have the matter of short term storage, until or while you do that; and then, with some 'keepers' into the question or archiving them... but, along side that, 'Display and Delivery'.. are you going to make prints? Are you going to upload to Flkr, how will YOU view your own photo's, who else will you distribute them to, and how will they get them?
Having just derided Farce-Broke.... if you actually look and the underlying mechanics of the thing, there's actually far more 'good' or 'useful' about it than there is, really all that bad.
What is 'bad' about it is more often the fact that I REALLY don't want or need to see a photo of some-one's bacon butty, or be told that's what they are having for brunch! And I certainly don't need a smurphone 'bonging' to alert me to the fact that this photo has just been taken! But beneath that; there is the fact that you can have a family album 'on-line' and the whole family can see it, whenever they want, if they want. Its the e-version of the old packet of snaps from boots in the play-ground or canteen or pub.... Flikr, boto-phucket, etc etc etc... all offer different means of delivery, and display... but.. Who, Why, What..... and do you just leave them there for folk to find, or do you shove the album on thier lap?
A-N-D.... this is probably the more important..... ESPECIALLY in our modern on-line on demand world.... EXPLAIN IT!
A Photo ISN'T just a photo... in days of old, If you walked into some-one's living room, and sat down whilst they put the kettle on and spotted a photo on the mantle-piece; likely meant nothing to you. Could have been your host, or her daughter or her mother, or her sister in law in Adelaide, for all you knew.... So when she came back with the tea... she's TELL YOU! probably spent half an hour telling you all about the person in the photo and what they did and why they kept the photo... BUT, they explained it! Walk into a gallery... pictures are NEVER displayed in isolation, at the very least they have a title... possibly obscure, oblique and pretentious... more so the more artistic the picture... BUT...... they usually have one, and "Man on Brighton Pier 1923" offers at least 'some' explanation... even if that's pretty obvious.
In our modern sound-byte society, this is probably the biggest 'lack' in photography; ANY sort of explanation.... and ironically one that the technology actually offers so much more scope to offer......
A Boots Happy-Snap, was often just that, and without the person that took it, looking over your shoulder to explain it for you as you came to it, you wouldn't get that explanation. Some more diligent, might have written a note on the back, or if put into the family album, added a title and caption, but not often.
NOW: you look at your camera, you have EXIF data, and an image file doesn't just contain the pixel colour and brightness values; the file contains a data-base, of info; the camera that took it, the lens used; what the focus range was, what the zoom setting was, what the ISO/Shutter-Speed/Aperture settings were.. those are just the standard, and might be of some interest to some photographers... don't do a lot to explain the photo though... but there are other fields... some of which the camera will auto-fill for you; like the date, and your name, maybe even a GPS location... but there are others....
Up-loaded to PC, there are more still you can access and fill in; Most obviousely "Title" but expanding on that "Description"
These, IF you use them, allow you to add that EXPLANATION, to the photo-file. And you can add as much or as little as you want. "Man on Brighten Pier" may still be as obviouse and un-informative in a file title as it is on a photo on a wall.. think it needs or warrants more? WRITE MORE!!!
Remember, unlike days of old, when the photographer would stand over your shoulder as you went through the happy snaps, telling you "Oh yes, that's Mable-Thorpe colleseum!"... with modern e-delivery you, the photographer are NOT there to explain the photo to the audience.
So, IF you are going to diaplay and distribute, and archive; ADD that explanation for the folk that wont have you next to them when they see it.
No gadgets required; no expert know-how or elevated tecnique need be learned; The blank bit of paper to add that explanation is already there; you dont even need hunt a pen; JUST fill in the field!
NOW you can shre that photo however; and it might have some extra relevence or meaning to any-one that looks at it... and that could be you too!
I mean, if you keep your early experiments for future reference; "Oooh.. why did I take that?" or "What was I trying to do there?" hard to tell... "Was that when I was seeing what happened with a Neutral Density filter? Or was that when I was trying out different aperture settings?" Often hard to tell, harder to remember... so MAKE A NOTE, and the file fields give you place to do that.
And on.... NOW you have the picture on your computer; you have an idea of who is going to look at it, and why. You have some idea if you are going to display and distribute, how you are going to do that.. and if you have heeded the suggestion, offered some extra explanation to the viewer withe the picture.
How much hard drive space do you have on your computer?
My lap-top is getting on a bit now, it only has a 350Gb hard drive. An awful lot of that filled with 'other crud' like maps and spread-sheets... The photo-archive on my desk-top is that big.....
So, could you MOST use a portable pocket hard-drive to keep all your keepers on to stop clogging up the computer?
What if your computer catches a cold? Would a second one for 'archive' be a good idea?
If you up-load all the 'display' photo's to a photo-host like farce-broke, do you NEED an additional archive, or want one?
NEF format files out of camera are likely 25Mb each... in jpg they are probably only 5 or 6Mb... and down-sized for web display, they could be less than 1Mb each.
How much storage do you think you will need? If you shoot NEF and then edit to make a display JPG, do you really need keep the original NEF too?
And so... STRATEGY
Its more questions than answers, and only YOU can work out what the best answers are for you....
Far more important than a tripod, or an accessory flash gun, ND filter or Grad, or polariser....
Who-Why-What... leads what you shoot, then what you do with it, and leads on to how you manage it after.
So, after batteries and SD cards; a pocket hard-drive or extra PC storage, maybe the nest most important bit of 'spend'....
Its oh-so-Much NOT in the kit-in-your-mitt, but the bit in your bonce; and looking at the far bigger picture, and tackling the things most likely to be more important and make biggest diference to your photo's.... in which that LITTLE bit of explanation to go with the picture, is oh-so-often the most lacking....
And so much of it, doesn't require ANY hardware to be bought, just a little thought to be applied.
If pressed, THAT is the most essential bit of camera 'gear'... a little thought about it, and not what it is, but what you want to do with it.
CAMERA BAG? And lens wrapped in bubble wrap..... well.... many decades ago, I had a similar starter outfit; it was an Olympus OM10, it had a soft case that came round it I had to completely take off to fit the film. And I Had a 70-210 zoom lens to put on it, when I wanted/needed. That had its own tube case, and a strap. Not the most convenient way to carry it all, and I had to find pockets for spare film. A camera bag was one of the first accessories I bought, and very useful... if I wanted or needed to lugg everything around with me.....
WARNING on the express topic of camera bags is... they have holes. Holes that are designed to take stuff.... spare lenses, flash-guns, filters, etc etc etc... and that tends to beg the conundrum, when you are starting out... "I have nothing to put in them holes!" and suggests at a time you likely see a lot of lacking on your pictures, a co-incidental lacking in the camera bag, that leads to the compounding of questions, and notion that fillingh the holes in the camera bag, getting those bits of kit, will make you the better pictures you hope for.... it wont.... blunt from the off; as earlier comment, you can have all the best gear in the world, if you dont have the know-how to use it, and haven't got the for-thought to know why you are using it... it wont do a darn thing for you. BEWARE the camera bag giving you gadget-acquestion-syndrome.. NOT better photo's or even making it easier to lugg camera kit about.... more kit it begs, heavier it gets actually the HARDER it is to lugg around! Ideas weigh nothing!
Keep it simple Silly; a camera bag is a very useful bit of equipment; but its far from essential, or the most important thing to have. They can be reasonably cheap though, and can help kleep kit tidy and some-what protected.
Tripod? Probably one of the most useful accessories to own, but more kit to carry, and better ones even more so. Remote Release? Hmmm two sort of go together a bit here.... BUT back to Improvisation; over the years I have probably taken as many photo's perching a camera on a picnic table or dry stone wall, or car roof, instead of a tripod; maybe using a jumper or coat to level it up rather like a bean-bag, but less sophisticated! And without a remote release, used the cameras 'self timer' delay so I dont have to touch or shake it and can effect a long exposure without the wobble..... So useful, but, not essential, and improvisation DOES work.
Filters? Well, in Digi-Domain, most filter effects can be applied in post-process, and often better than trying to do them in camera. A polariser's effect, cannot be replicated or mimicked in post process, and I do tend to use a lot, so I have one for each lens... still far from essential though. Grads and ND filters, are more contentious; for effecting localized contrast control you cant get in PP, they are useful, but often inconvenient, and other techniques can be used. Neutral-Density and particular large stop-factor ND's tend to lead to a lot of cliche long exposure shots; and again other tools and PP techniques can be exploited to similar effect. Far from essential.
So, you REALLY don't need more than 'just' a camera... anything beyond that really needs to actually 'help'.. and what is 'most' important really is very subjective.... having something worth taking photo of, is, after the camera, really the only essential, so perhaps, your idea of 'JUST' getting out and about and using what you got, and improvising wherever you can, is the best way to be going for now.