Good choice, but I've gone pentax but thinking of going Nikon but I don't take enough photos to give a shit. The most I've done with my camera for money was take business's pictures which almost any SLR given the right equipment will do just fine.
I have last years Pentax K10D. The great thing I like about it is I picked up two nice but older lenses. The built in image stabelization is a big bonus too.
The lenses I got came from the back of my store, one is a 1:40/50 1970 hunk of metal macro that looks like if I threw it at anything it would kill/mame or break someone or something
The other is a really nice 50mm F1.7 old school pentax that looks like it was manufactured around the same time period. Both do an excellent job especially for being free. You'd be supprised how many people I've sold pentax's to who have relitives who have much older pentax lenses.
The two things I find to be the best features of the Pentax line of dSLR's is the backwards compatability with much older lenses. Anything from 1976 and up is a go, even screw mount as long as you get the adapter ring, valued between 20 - 30 bucks.
I wouldn't go canon though just because I work too much with canon on a business front, their a fucking mess and nightmare, don't retail end of it any comission unless you sell so many 10's of thousands of dollars a year, plus their stuff is totally over priced. It's good quality equipment but they really give people the shaft on lenses and flashes especially aswell as batteries. Replacement battery for your camera say is close to $100, the identical battery without the name stamped all over it is really $50 from a non known name company. Their ex flashes are another good example. The 430 EX II sells for 369.00 but I can get a Metz flash (Who've been making flashes for decades on a professional level) for 249.99 which is about the same power as the canon. Canon doesn't even manufacture any of their flashes, their made by Nissan, but that's true with both Pentax and Nikon aswell as probably other companies. They just pay x company to produce x product and stamp their company name all over it. Another prime example with Canon is their lenses. I've seen several lenses with huge price gap inbetween the image stabelized feature and not. One I can't remember the exact specs of (think it was a 70-300 2.
was about $350 without image stabelization, the one with IS was about $799. Non of the common camera companies even make their own glass for lenses, they buy it all from Hoya Corp. who just in the last year bought out Pentax. This is a world where you do get what you pay for, and with canon you're paying for a name who doesn't really like to service their own product anyways, 1 year warrenty, ew. Nikon + Pentax = 2 year warrenty = sex
A lot of people don't know much about Sony and Minolta either. Here it is: One day Minolta woke up in the middle of the digital boom and said "we're not doing this anymore" and sold all their tech and patents to Sony, who didn't buy their technicians or their experiance. And that's why a Sony dSLR takes the same mount as a Minolta lense has.
Personally working in the camera business I've grown to frown on photography, all my life, it's going nowhere fast and makes me want to vomit all over canon especially. Camera companies don't make much on cameras anymore, they make more on accesories (LENSES!)
Sorry for ranting and perhaps spoiling your fun! Take some good pictures though. Just remember to store them somewhere actually safe, you know like the good old Gold surface CD's we sell here at Camera Corner Foto Source, it's about the only thing we make money on anymore