I agree that a bridge camera is the way to go. For a long time I have been recommending that people DO NOT get SLR's if it is because they believe they will automatically get better pics - This is not necessarily true!
My old Nikon 8700 bridge camera was a little stunner....
And the funny thing is it was slated as an unusable camera with many users. Goes to show that some people slate things when maybe they shouldn't! If you look at my
photobucket account I think the only thing that restricted this camera in a major way was me, although it was as slow as an old dog!
The reason I upgraded from this camera was for a couple of reasons -
I almost always shot in manual mode and this camera was not quite optimized for this, however it was not far behind an SLR just that some functions were berried in menus.
The camera was also slow to focus, and had a lot of noise at anything above ISO 200. However it was a 2003 model which would have cost the original owner over £1000 back then
I paid about £250 s/h about three years ago.
Anyway, to get the shot above with an SLR is going to cost me at least an extra £200 for a dedicated macro lens alone!
So, unless you know you really want an SLR, and why then forget it and save yourself some serious cash!
As for a bridge camera, not sure what is available these days I would highly recomend finding a photography specific forum telling them exactly what you want and then go to Jessops or independant to road test some different models - take a memory card with you if you have the right one which is what I did!
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