(04 Jan 2015, 5:13 pm)MurdnunoC wrote I'm interested in buying a camera (and potentially taking up photography as a hobby) so I'm looking for suggestions as to what to buy.

Ideally, I would like a DSLR and I'm prepared to pay around £300-400. However, because I'm a absolute novice, is it worth buying one? Should I settle for something less?

As well as photos, I'd like to shoot the occasional video too. Most DSLR cameras appear to do both, but is the quality any good?

I would also like to know what the battery life is like on DSLR cameras?

Give me your recommendations.

Cheers.   

Nikon. I'd swear by them, but the Canon EOS range are also very good. The only thing to be aware of with a DSLR, is obviously you're not going to get the optical super zoom of a point and shoot, well unless you fork out for a range of lenses. If you take a look at Jessops, some of the D3xxx range cameras are well within your budget, and will include the 18-55mm VR lens, which is what me and Dan have on our D5100s. 

Great thing about DSLRs too is that you can just shoot in RAW format. This captures a massive amount of data around each shot, so you can just pull it into Photoshop or Lightroom, and adjust readjust your exposure and levels using CameraRAW. If you tried doing it with a JPEG, it tends to distort the image.

(04 Jan 2015, 5:21 pm)Dan wrote I very rarely have to charge my D5100. In the summer I was going out from sunrise until the very last bus of the night on some occasions and I think I went about three days without charging it - and I'm rather trigger happy and take between 3 and 5 shots of one bus as it approaches (to ensure the destination display comes out).

I'm completely the same. I've been out most days over the two week Christmas break, took well over 2000 individual shots, and I'm still on a 3/3 battery bars according to my camera. I did however invest in a spare battery that I keep charged, which came in handy when I was at the Metrocentre rally back in May.