one thing i woudl like to advise you man, is that, if your going to want to take good pictures, like of cars or scenory(sp?) then you are going to need an slr camera, either that or a camera with atleast 7 or 8 mega pixels, because odds are you going to want to blow up pictures at some point if you are going to get into photography, if you want to do normal pictures, just for fun for right now, get something like the kodak z740 its got 10x optical and a pretty alright digital, im not sure off the top of my head, i think its about 5 maybe. another good one is the sony cybershot thats 5 mp i think but it also has about 12x optical, since you are just starting out, i wouldnt really go in an slr camera right now, there pretty expensive depending on what you get, especially if its digital. but if you think thats what you want , go with it, id also suggest getting atleast a 1g memory card, whether it be sd xd or a memory stick or even compact flash, but that all depends on the type of camera you get. reason i suggest getting a 1g is becauase you will probably be wanting to take multiple pictures of the same shot, and thats the card your going to want to have, when i sell my camera's to customers at my store, i usually want them to play with the camera first before i really get into telling them about it just to see if they like the way that it feels and what not, so if your going to want to get a camera, i think the best thing is to go to a camera store, and play around with the camera's, that way you can get a good feel for them and a good idea of what you want. one thing i wil mention to is that if you do get a camera, my opininion is stick with an SD memory chip when it comes to a camera's memory, reason for that is because, right now, they are more of a guess you could say, the "universal memory" because alot more manufactures use SD as apposed to others, and that way if one camera goes out that you might have you dont have to worry about spending an extra 60 or 70 dollars on a card depending on the size you want


i hope i help, if you have anymore questions man just let me know