Thanks for all the input. Here is a bit more about why I'm considering stock. It's not that I expect to make much money. I probably won't.
Having read a few biographies I've noticed that most successful artists do some kind of apprenticeship. This paying-your-dues work forces the artist to learn the technical aspects of their art and in exchange gets to hone their creative style. Stock is going to be my apprenticeship. It will force me to work on the technical parts of taking a picture so that when I'm ready to do creative work the technical aspects will be second nature.
A little more about why I'm asking about cameras. I work at a company called Mobicious that runs a site called SnapMyLife. It's site that focuses on sharing photos from mobile phones. Since I wanted the site to be successful I started taking lots of pictures. I was soon disappointed with the quality of mobile phone cameras and the quality of the images I was taking. I upgraded to a Nikon point and shoot. The pictures were better, but I wanted more. I started reading books on composition. Technically I was OK, but I was taking snapshots.
Then I came across a stock site and decided to give it a try. I figured it would force me to learn to take good images.
Everything from my Nikon P&S was coming back rejected for composition. I saw that new pictures were being accepted that were very compositionally similar to what I was submitting. I then decided, (perhaps wrongly), that the images were probably compositionally OK, but that I was getting a generic rejection due to the quality of the images from my camera. Especially since I got the last rejection almost as soon as the image was finished uploading.
So that's my story. I don't want my pictures rejected for quality. They can be rejected because they are crummy snapshots. That I can fix by learning to take decent pictures. I want a decent enough camera so that my pictures will not be rejected for quality issues. The limiting factor is my budget.
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