Depends on your budget.....there is a wide variety of cameras and lenses you can buy.....First of all...do some research on which brand you want to go with....mostly it comes down to Canon or Nikon. cause once you start buying equipments for a certain brand ...you'll have to stick with it for a long time. I am a canon person, so I can give you information on Canons .... the basic for a semi professional is Canon Digital Rebel XT or XTi, which is the cheapest amongst the canon camera bodies; around $400. But a good semi-professional one would be a 20D or a 30D which is around $1200 for the body. If you want to go professional, the very basic/cheapest would be a 5D which would cost about $15-1600 for the body. A more expensive and professional camera would be Mark II which costs around $6-7K For lenses....there are a million choices....okay maybe not million but definitely thousands. Let me know more about the type of pictures you will be taking and we can talk about the different lenses.