I'll sell you a spider monkey egg.

 

A very nice point & shoot.

 

Thing is, you can maybe get a 30D with the 18-55 kit lens on ebay for 400$ (although I highly doubt that ... more like 550-700$) ... but that lens is a disaster, especially if you plan on shooting indoors without a flash (talking real flash, not on-camera).

Frankly, you won't get anything decent for body+lens for 400$. I mean you could really skimp and get a 20D or early Rebel for 2-300$ and a Canon 50mm f1.8 lens (100$) ... but it's not a very broad use. And forget shooting at car shows with the fiddy. I suppose you could get the 18-55 kit lens to go along (they sell separately for 50-150$), but I can not stress how crappy they are and how lame your pics will look no matter what you do.

 

Definitely a Canon G11 or S90. I've got an S90 for when I don't feel like lugging around 30lbs. of Nikon crap (or I need to sneak a camera into a concert), and it's really quite good for a point & shoot. And both of those options have expansive controls that most p&s don't have. The G11 takes AMAZING closeup/macro shots, BTW. These are brand new, right in your price range.

 

And like Zorro says, if you get a DSLR just to have a DSLR and you skimp on the lenses and stuff, you're pics aren't going to look that great anyway.... a high quality P&S like I mentioned above will probably have much better results.

 

Well I have definitely been doing a lot of research, and like you guys said, the lens is probably the most important.

Still looking, still leaning towards the 30d, but it is definitely a dilemma on the lens. That will likely end up being 300-500 in itself..

on to the P&S's....

 

Here's a nice article comparing the virtues of the cameras I mentioned, as well as vs. other similar ones. With those cameras, you still have total manual control over almost everything.

Canon PowerShot S90 review: verdict, PowerShot S90 vs G11 vs Panasonic LX3 vs Olympus E-P1 vs Panasonic GF1 | Cameralabs