What type of camera to buy

[tgtaggie]

Hi! I am about to graduate from college next week and I have a couple of questions in regards to what type of camera I should buy. I own a construction company with my brother and father and I need to take semi-professional pictures so I could show potential clients and post on our website. I also want to be able to edit them in either adobe lightroom 2 or Apple's aperture 2. Right now I am using a Nikon coolpix S710 and uploading them on my macbook. And it is just not cutting it. So, my question is: Should I look for a beginner's digital slr camera or one of those ultra zoom cameras. My budget is around $500ish (I can use my student discount to buy the software). And what kind of lens should I look for? Any other suggestions is greatly appreciated. Thanks.