Beginner DLSR £400 Budget

Hey,

Right ive decided its time to step up to a DSLR and wanted some advice from you guys in the forums. Im looking around the £350 to £400 mark and will mainly be using it for macros, slow shutter speeds and portraits. This will be my first SLR but i have previously used friends 350d and 400d cameras.

Ive been looking at reviews etc and seems that its between the canon 1000d, 400d, Sony A200 or Nikon D40/D60. Any advice on these choices? And whether anyone uses these cameras?

Open to suggestions on the camera, Cheers in advance

Heres a write up

If you have friends that own lenses for a particular system and they are likely to let you borrow them, buy into whichever system they use. Lenses end up costing much more than the camera and you keep them and use them with your next camera when you trade up or your camera dies.

Personally, I prefer Canon, their lenses are cheaper and I think that they have make the ultimate digital SLRs, they invented the cheap digital SLR and for the most part they have been ahead of Nikon. But at the end of the day, I would happily buy into either system. I would not consider an SLR from any other manufacturer as in 5 years time, XYZ manufacturer might go out of business or decide not to make SLRs. Canon and Nikon are here to stay additionally, there are a wider range of lenses from Sigma, Tokina and others for both of these systems.

Canon is good- it came across in the reviews I was reading before getting mine (Canon Rebel XS 10.1MP)- I was just writing on another blog but you can try first to look at www.checkcost.co.uk/ (that did not work for me but someone else said they looked there), I got mine at www.crazycameras.co.uk. I will be getting a smaller slr next week for my brother as he's also interested in that price range. Its so hard to find something at that range!

Cheers, i think im going to get the nikon d40 for around the £250 mark then spend some additional money on fisheye/macro lens depending on prices. Also i looked at other accessories to add to the price such as bag etc, but hopefully i will be able to come in just under £400

I let you know of the set up once ive purchased it

I know a site which does the best deals for lenses and accessories. It might help you in the future. Quite funny enough, I am using D40 too. Is it a lot of beginners started with that camera? Let me know