You don't actually need a 'good' camera to get a perfectly good picture. It helps, but a lot of my photos have been taken with a 1 mega-pixel digital camera (ancient technology now) - and they look fine. You can get by with a quite cheap digital camera these days - which, considering the price of the shoes you just bought isn't a bad buy, is it? However even a fantastically expensive, high quality camera will take bad photos if you don't follow some simple rules.
The first thing that you need for a good photo is light and lots of it. Nearly all of the terrible photos you see on the web are taken in a back room late in the evening, with the curtains drawn shut. Our eyes adjust amazingly well to dark rooms, but cameras don't. Light bulbs put out a dim and orange light, which our brains work out should be 'white', and we see things as perfectly normal. Digital cameras are dumb though, and they take exactly what they see - dim and orange pictures, often looking grainy and washed out. The flashes on most all-in-one cameras are really not very good either, so the alternative to dark and grainy is harsh and with weird shadows. If you don't have a camera with an expensive flash, or are using a webcam with no flash at all, you can help things by using some good bright light bulbs - a couple of Anglepoise lamps or something like that. The light will still be 'yellow', but you can correct for that. If you want to spend a little extra on good equipment, you can get external flash units quite cheaply in your local camera exchange shop, who can advise you far better than I can. Of course another solution is to make use of that big yellow ball in the sky - but we haven't seen that here in the UK for a few weeks now. All the same, photos taken with the advantage of a bit of daylight help.
The second thing you need is good quality light. This is about avoiding harshness and shadows. If you have a very directional light (or flash bulb) and point it straight at yourself, a couple of things happen. Firstly, there will be a big shadow person standing behind you on the wall. On a photo this can look like you have a halo or a very large head. Secondly, where the light is at an angle to your features, even the smallest bump will show up a huge shadow, making your skin look rough and your nose look enormous. The answer is to make sure the light is diffuse - spread evenly, rather than in a tight beam. You can diffuse directional lights, lamps and flashes by pointing them at a large white surface (such as the ceiling) so that the light bounces from that onto you. Some camera flashes come with a diffuser, but you can achieve a similar effect by putting a semi transparent bit of plastic in front of the flash (some people recommend things like pringle carton lids for this). Beware though that flashes put out a LOT of heat, so be careful you don't end up holding a piece of molten plastic.
When you are taking the pictures, another way to improve your photos is to give yourself some space. The closer you are to your camera, the more pronounced your features look. If you have a zoom, or can use a smaller part of the whole photo, then taking the picture from a larger distance will make everything look so much more natural.
Finally, getting a decent photo editing program can fix a lot of problems. I use Paint Shop Pro which has an 'auto fix' button that corrects for strange lighting, removes grainyness and can do things like red-eye removal quickly and easily. Remember that a photo can be dramatically improved long after it has been taken, so don't give up just because the first time you take a picture, it looks less than perfect.
This applies here too - if you are the partner of someone who dresses up, or you dress up yourself and find this makes you unhappy, you won't find answers anywhere on the net - just stories of how other people have decided to deal (or not) with it. In talking to other crossdressers, I've found that there are many more than just the one 'explanation' for all this and that we each want to dress for different purposes, in different ways, for different times and over different periods. So, please take my ramblings with a large pinch of salt. I'm pretty happy with my lifestyle, but that doesn't mean it would automatically suit anyone else, or that it's the best way to live. Having said that, I'm here on the net at least in part to say 'you're not the only one' to anyone who's having to deal with crossdressing.
It can be scary to see someone (or yourself) dress up. Many TVs seem to change more than just their clothes when they put on a dress - a different side of their personality becomes more visible. They say clothes maketh the man and it's true - what you wear can have a profound effect on the way you feel (try having a bad haircut and disagreeing with that). Quite often long term partners of tvs haven't been aware of this 'secret' side and can find it very unnerving to discover such a startling secret has been kept from them. Don't panic though - just because a bloke puts on a dress doesn't change his sexuality, or make him into some weird Jeckyl and Hyde - he's just a tv.
But I'm afraid if your experience is much like mine, all this is hard to cope with when your world has been turned upside down by embarassing revelations. There's no point in coming to quick decisions about what it all means to you though - it has taken most of my adult life to get to the point where it all makes sense. Luckily, when it does make sense to you, then you can start making sense of it to the people around you - and often they'll suprise you by not shooting you on the spot.
(Claudia takes no responsibility if you're shot as a result of wearing a dress)
On the other hand consider that most shop assistants will have dealt with more than one TV in their lives. I know an owner of a wedding dress store who has men come in every week asking to try something on. The thing is that they are there to sell clothes (makeup, shoes, whatever) - and probably don't care a jot about who they sell them to.
The secret to painless shopping is to not skulk around looking like you're about to rob the store. Choose what you want and buy it. Be polite. They're not likely to even consider if it's for you, and would it kill you if they did?
(See disclaimer above)