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I've always wanted my own camera. Now i've come across some money after working for a year ;)  and want to make my dream come true! :P . Anyways, I wanted to know if anybody had any suggestions on what to get, I want a quality camera that i won't need to replace for quite awhile, so I am willing to shop around and not just pick this up and say "hey i can afford it, its digital, what else could i want?" Just wondering, thanks for any input :)

p.s. i will put some new pics of me up if i end up getting a camera so thats a plus to suggest things and maybe....donate to the cause :P

I recommend a Nikon D2X.

Of course, five thousand dollars is probably beyond your budget. :P


So - what is your budget?

And how complex a camera do you want? Do you like to fiddle?

Do you have anything specific in mind that you want the camera for? (eg: nature/urban/portrait/etc)

yea....$5,000 ..not quite ;)

i'd be willing to pay about $500 probably

i love to fiddle :D

i'll photograph anything

Hmmm, not sure then.

Digital SLRs start at around $700... you could possibly get a second hand one for under $500, but you'll have to also factor in the cost of any lenses you'll want.
I got a D70+lens costing £750 plus two extra lenses (£300+£200), total value around £1250 ... which is over $2200. Wow, put like that it sounds really a lot! :o
SLRs are good because you can have different lenses and change shutter speeds, aperture and lots of other stuff.

For under $500 you can still get SLR-like cameras, but I'm not sure how the compare to proper SLRs.

Here are a couple of compact digicams that I've seen recommended to people in the past, but they're relatively cheap and there's probably better available for more money...
Canon PowerShot A520 ~ $184 (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Canon/canon_a520.asp?dontcount=1)
Sony DSC-S90 ~ $204 (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Sony/sony_dscs90.asp)

Ooooh, DPR has a search/compare feature:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare_post.asp (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare_post.asp)

Plug in all the stuff you want there and it'll bring back upto ten results for you to compare against each other.

I've a Canon Powershot, and i highly recommend the brand.  You definately want as many megapixels as you can get... mine has 3.2 and that's on the lower end nowadays.  Ditto zoom - you'll want a lot of that, and you also want to be sure that your camera can take various lenses, just in case.  

No he doesn't.
He wants one that he likes to hold and feels nice to use, has plenty of useful features and so on, and most importantly produces good quality images.

Megapixels is just the size of the image - so whilst you definitely want to set a minimum (I'd say no less than 4MP), it's no where near the most important aspect.
(The difference between 12MP and 6MP is 4048x3040 vs 3008x2000 - not as much as you might think, and a good quality initial image can be enlarged in Photoshop/etc without necessarily losing much quality.)