I am an amateur photographer and am looking for a camera...?

First things first. The name of the effect you're looking for is "Depth of Field" Basically that means the depth of the field that is in focus. There's nothing magic about it... any good lens will give you the effect. It's not in the camera it's in the lens. The one qualification for a depth of field shot you're asking about is a wide open lens. The larger your iris the shorter the depth of field. That's the reason it's so hard to do good focus in low light, the field becomes very short when the lens is open wide. I hope you understand that.

By the by the link above is bad - nothing comes up.

A great starter camera, especially among SLR's is the Canon Rebel XS. I just bought one and I'm really enjoying the photos. I've been shooting professionally and privately for about 35 years and this is a good camera. I'm not really into bells and whistles so the basics are good for me... this camera fills my needs. Anyway at $466 on

buydig.com you can't really go wrong.

The reason I kind of stress an SLR is manual focus. You can't get that on a point and shoot camera.

Good Luck!

The link is bad.

What you want is the ability to control depth of field. Large aperture lenses give you that sweet effect. The out of focus areas are referred to as 'bokeh'

You don't need to spend 700 bucks on photoshop when you won't use 95% of what it can do. Get photoshop elements, 7.0 is the new version. You can download a full version, 30 day trial from photoshop, just google elements 7.0 it's just over 100 bucks last time I checked. It's a powerful piece of software, and it will do just about anything to a photograph you could want. You'll need a fairly speedy PC and 1 gig of RAM (if I remember correctly) to run it.

There's too much info on dSLRs to give here, but I'll give you a starting point.

Nikon, Canon and Sony alpha are the big three.

The entry level price wise are Nikon's d40,d40x and d60. Canon XS, XSi and the new T1i. Sony's A200, A300 and A350. All these cameras can be had for under 700 bucks, and in some cases under 500 depending on model and extras.

Each brand has its pros and cons, you have some research to do.

And finally, if you have the cash, don't be afraid to go higher up the chain (regardless of brand) there is no such thing as a beginner dSLR. The $500 dSLR isn't easier to use than the $2,000 one.

I would suggest a pentax k200d not a km but a k200d.

They are weather sealed and a very good camera with 10 or 12 mega pixels i forget. I did tons of reaserch. It compares to the canon xsi which is like 800$ canadian. Canon xsi has slightly better quality of picture but for the price a k200d is the way to go. The canon xsi is more expensive because it is a CANON. but who cares. Also you have to get image stabilization lenses for it, which cost a lot.

The canon xs, the canon xt and xti are ok but the pentax k200d is way better.

The nikon d80 is older technology and it is heavy but it is good

The nikon d40 is very cheap. It is a good camera. Nothing wrong with it. Forget about the nikon d50 it got discontinued. The nikon d60 is also very good.

look up these cameras on www.dpreviews.com

or check out some other reviews on these cameras on google.

They are a great way to learn to become a pro