What I'm After

Here is what I want. I think I can get the camera body for about $600. Then I'll need a lens of some sort to start.

This is a Nikon D200. It's a little older, but is a pro level digital camera. I've looked at the D100, and it would be okay too, but is older still. The current iteration of this model is the D300 and there is also a D700. But these cameras are new enough that I'd be looking upwards of $2000 for the D300 and maybe twice that much for the D700! Yikes!

Christmas Photo

This is a shot I did at Christmas. Kind of a Norman Rockwell type setting. I hand held the shot using my wife's XTi. I adjusted the white balance so the color looked right. Even though there is some blurring from Summer moving, I think its still a great shot. Maybe I need to crop it a little??

Update

A few things going on. I FINALLY sold the Minolta kit on eBay! Whoo Hoo! Not for as much as I'd like, but hey, its a $100 more than I had with the camera just sitting in my closet! Now I need to list the Nikon, the broken Canon, some other electronic stuff, and probably the Yashica (like I'm really using it!). I'm also going to list the Canon camera bag. I was going to keep this one because I thought I would leaning towards a XTi. But my thinking has been more towards Nikon lately. I've been pricing old Nikon D100's on eBay. They sell for about $250 to $300 with out a lens. This is an older camera, but is pro level. I would still need to find a good lens. So this could be rather expensive. But my thinking is that I would be much happier with something like this as opposed to a pro-sumer or just consumer level camera. I've also priced the D200, which obviously is one step up from the D100. Newer technology, good lookng camera. Selling for about $600 to $700 with out a lens. So, that is the direction I'm going now. If that comes together, then I will want the Nikon camera bag I have.

I'm hoping that with selling a lot of my junk I can get a good portion of the money I need, then perhaps can take some from the tax return to make up the difference.

Stay tuned.