DPReview.com is a great place to review cameras. After much research, I just emerged myself into the Olympus DSLR arena with an E-510. I was always a Canon fan, but with the quality of lens that Oly offers, you cant go wrong. The Oly E-510 with the 2 kit lens could run you about 8 and change, with a nice 4gb CF card and bag putting you at 1K and that should keep you in budget. E-510 all the way.
Afraid it /does/ compute mate. The Olympus kit lenses blow the Canon kit lenses out of the water. The more expensive Olympus lenses generally beat the nearest Canon equivalent in terms of image quality and distortion. The Oly ultra-wide zooms blow anything available for Canon away easily. Sure the pro lenses aren't cheap but no lenses of that quality are cheap.
To answer the original question "My budget would be around US$1000 including 1 or 2 decent lenses to get me started."
To be honest I hope your definition of decent is slightly different to mine or you are going to be a little dissapointed. You should be able to get a DSLR with a couple of acceptable lenses for that budget, but not decent. One decent lens will cost most of your budget.
Look at any system, they are all equally capable of taking good pictures, don't believe all the Canon trolls marketing hyperbole.
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DPReview.com is a great place to review cameras. After much research, I just emerged myself into the Olympus DSLR arena with an E-510. I was always a Canon fan, but with the quality of lens that Oly offers, you cant go wrong. The Oly E-510 with the 2 kit lens could run you about 8 and change, with a nice 4gb CF card and bag putting you at 1K and that should keep you in budget. E-510 all the way.
Uh, better quality than Canon lenses? Does not compute, sir.
Reply to Liam.
Afraid it /does/ compute mate. The Olympus kit lenses blow the Canon kit lenses out of the water. The more expensive Olympus lenses generally beat the nearest Canon equivalent in terms of image quality and distortion. The Oly ultra-wide zooms blow anything available for Canon away easily. Sure the pro lenses aren't cheap but no lenses of that quality are cheap.
To answer the original question "My budget would be around US$1000 including 1 or 2 decent lenses to get me started."
To be honest I hope your definition of decent is slightly different to mine or you are going to be a little dissapointed. You should be able to get a DSLR with a couple of acceptable lenses for that budget, but not decent. One decent lens will cost most of your budget.
Look at any system, they are all equally capable of taking good pictures, don't believe all the Canon trolls marketing hyperbole.