I'm a zoology grad student in far-off (for yanks and poms, anyway!) New Zealand - meaning I am lucky enough to get to go to all sorts of awesome places and see some amazing animals - or get rained and snowed on, more likely.
To the gist of it!
I have had some success taking photos with my Panasonic Lumix FZ-1. Love the 12x optical zoom, hate the two megapixels and complete lack of any kind of manual control - autofocus on those things is useless when you have a saddleback hopping around your head or a parakeet whizzing past!
Now I am looking to upgrade to a D-SLR, with the plan being to take lots of (hopefully) beautiful pictures of animals and scenery...and ideally build up to some more "artsy" photography and people shots.
Was quite keen on a Nikon D70, but have since talked to some people (including the director of a Natural History Film Making course!) who have suggested the Canon 300D...the plus of the 300D being a wider range of cheaper lenses with image stabilisation (A definite must-have, the rainforests here are too dense to lug around a tripod sometimes...being 6'3 can be enough of a challenge!). Also the 300D is a bit cheaper, which would let me get a few more lenses...
I was wondering what the consensus would be on which camera to get? Most of the forums here seem to be about sports, people or still life...
Obviously as a student I am VERY budget constrained, would be looking at maybe around NZ$2000 (maybe about...US$1400?).
Also which lenses would be good? I am thinking I would need a long-range lens (like a 300mm), a good mid-range one (like the 28-70mm that comes with the D70 kit)...and ideally some kind of macro would be awesome, a lot of my work is with little 1 inch tree frogs!

Sorry for the novel-like length of this post...

Never talked to a green rat before. First of all I am very envious of your locale !! I already resent you !!

Having said that - on to business. Jack, I have had the Canon Digital Rebel (here its the 300D). Just recently upgraded to the 20D due to special requirement for my business.

I put on a little over 6000 shots in 7 months. I used it in the muggy Michigan summers and the Cold (0°F) winters. I shoot wildlife/car races/horse shows and a few landscapes. The camera has performed flawlessly. Most of my horse and race car shots are with the Canon 28/135 IS USM. A greatly underappreciated lens, by the way.

My "long" shots are with the Canon 100/400L IS USM.

My wife has stolen it from me and equipped it with a Tokina 24/200 AFX. Tack sharp and fast focus. She has put another 2000 shots on it in the last two months.

I use the battery grip (on a long shoot the convenience of not fumbling around for the 'spare')

you might go to my site www.jpferguson.com

or my galleries at www.pbase.com/jpferguson

It is a camera that will "grow" with you.

regards - Jon F.

Decided to go for the Nikon D70 with the kit lens (18-70mm).
Helped that the camera store operator threw in a 512MB card to "sweeten the pot" (worth a cool $300 here, or two weeks pay!).
Going to save up and get the Sigma 70-300mm macro lens, but will probably buy that online (US$200 as opposed to some NZ$800 here!).

>Going to save up and get the Sigma 70-300mm macro lens, but will probably buy that online

Not really a good lens I guess and by no means image stabilization.

Uwe