So many questions and so little time! :-)

[LaurieE]

Hi everyone!
I thought I'd save everyone a little time by posting some of my questions in ONE thread rather than trying to find a thread for each question! LOL

Here we go.... Oh BTW thanks in advance for taking time to answer.

BACKGROUD INFO: I decided that what I love to do most is shoot portraits. BUT I'm lousy at it! haha...The problem is this. I never shot film so when I jumped into this with both feet two things went on. My ADHD kicked into overdrive and I decided that if I was just doing it for fun I didn't care about the technichal part of it! So I didn't read anything that made my head ache! LOL Secondly...because of the fact that I never shot film when I did realize that the technical part and the headaches were REQUIRED I had trouble figuring it out because I had no point of reference to start from. Thirdly....I was already shooting like crazy and had developed my own crazy trial and error ways of doing things and bad habits like refusing to use a tripod.

SO now....I want to be more proficent and I want to take better pictures and I feel like I need to back up and start over. UGH!

With that being said here are my questions.

I have several lenses...I have the kit lenses that came with my D70S and a Nikkor 2.8 manual "micro" lense and a Sigman "mini-wide" angle lense. Two days ago I got the 18-200 Nikon lense. I actually LOVE the way portraits look when I use the micro lense..except that it's very difficult because of the fact that I have to use this lense with a tripod and that is difficult when I'm outdoors shooting children. :-) Soooo..What lenses do you feel are best for portraits and why? I realize it's not the lense but the artist...but I'm sure there are lenses that are better than others for portraits right?.

I also have the SB 600 speed light and although I've read the manual...A lot of it feels like GREEK to me! I can't figure out how to use it off of my camera effectively. It seems like I need more than one to make it worthwhile. Is that true?

Next Question: I am lucky enough to have a spare room that I'd like to turn into a studio. I can't invest too much money into it right now...so what are the bare essentials I would need? I just want to practice right now anyway so any tips or household substitutions would be great! For example someone told me that I could use the silver/gold foil fold up sun blockers that we use in our cars instead of the more expensive alternative.


Next... Do you clean your own sensors? I've been doing it myself and never had a problem BUT recently I've noticed spots in a lot of my pictures even after I clean my sensor and I'm scared to death that I have done something wrong. OR that I'm not doing it correctly and I'm not getting it clean. Any tips for that?

Okay....That's it for now..but I'm sure the saga will continue! :-)

Laurie