looking at what JL have in stock

I would spend 450 quid on the EPL5 which now comes with a voucher for a free 17mm pancake lens (which'll give you sharper pictures and make the camera even more portable).

If you prefer the feel of a DSLR then the canon 1100 + the cheap 50mm lens would be a good option (360 quid all in)

The Nikon 3100 + it's 50mm or 35mm lens (around 450 quid all in) would be good too.

The sony SLT A58K comes in a pack with memory card & case for around 360 quid and you can bung in a 50mm lens on top for about 150 quid. The A-mount macro lens is also pretty good value, if a little wide (you'd need to get very close in)

Finally, the samsung NX1000 is great value for 280 quid although the additional lenses are pretty expensive.

I would HUGELY recommend getting a wide apertured 'normal' lens (somewhere between 20-50mm depending on the sensor size) with the camera as this will help you drop backgrounds out of focus (for a bit of wow factor, if you're used to compacts), but more importantly it'll let you take photos indoors without always needing a flash.

Good lenses actually matter far more than the entry level camera you bung them on (although good lenses are rarely cheap & most will cost a good deal more than your budget on their own - fortunately company's often sell cheap 'nifty 50s' as gateway lenses and to suck in those of us that learned photography on old film SLRs for which those lenses were 'the kit'.

Kit zooms are ok, but the non-zoom primes are what make these cameras sing.

One last word for the Olympus - the JPEG output of the olympus cameras is class leading. Might seem a small thing, but it's a huge confidence booster to see great pics straight from the camera without mucking around in Photoshop. It's also a huge time saver too.

Posted By: Cardiff Canary, Sep 2, 16:09:37