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In my experience, with DSLRs, some equipment considerations are very important. Sure anyone can stick a camera on a tripod and aim it at the Milky Way, and probably get something that looks reasonable at first glance. Sadly, many standard DSLR lenses are just not up to the optical quality required for good colour rendition and dispersion control, and this shows up when your trying to process these images. To improve performance you need to go to premium lenses, preferably with ED glass elements, and good optical design to eliminate coma, donuts, etc across the field of view. To get this sort of optical quality usually requires spending some money. Also many of the supposedly fast wide angle lenses cannot actually be used at fast settings for wide field astro photography, they require stopping down to try and clean up the distortion. And shooting at f7, as opposed to say f2.8, is going to force you to use much longer subs which increases the risk or star trailing, or introduces the need for a tracking mount of some kind. As to ISO, it is important for many of the older model DSLRs still in peoples closets, and often the high ISO setting means high noise levels. Sure you can try and process out the noise, but darks and bias frames shot at high ISO setting can have problems as well.
So its not as simple, imho, as suggested below. It is simple to get started with a DSLR and a tripod, until you look closely or try to enlarge it.
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