I've been wanting to get into a little more "real" picture taking (I'm no photographer). Wife wants a more flexible camera than our super-small point and shoot (Canon SD10).

I may be instigating a flame war, but hey, let the knowledge flow!

What should I be looking at? Something that gives me reasonable flexibility but isn't necessarily the TOP of the line.

Thanks

Cheap, good camera to start with and use the green mode :)

Or find a used cheap SLR if you want to learn the basics first and decide before spending more money on a digital body.

I went from a Nikon N90s (film) to Nikon 5700 (digital & hated) to current camera Nikon D70 (loveing it).

If you decide to skip to digital go straight to a digital SLR. Go with what feels comfortable in your hands. Play with all the bells and whistles.

I had an old Pentax camera and it took me forever to try and figure out what I was doing wrong as things were blurred, out of focus, etc.

With the DSLR, you take a picture, look at it, see if it looks okay and if not, figure out what you did wrong and try again. The learning curve might be high coming from a P&S (but then the same if you moved to a film SLR camera perhaps), but the rate at how fast you learn is quicker with the DSLR.

Two top pics for an entry level dSLR are Nikon D50 and Canon DRebel XT. Both are bound to be more than enough to make you smile. :)

Was good, images were pretty clean even at high ISO, has a few nice things over the D70 even which I was surprised.