assuming you don’t already have a bunch of lenses, it really doesn’t matter a whole lot which brand you get. They are all more than excellent.
DSLRs are one of those rare products in which there are no bad ones. I would not even worry about the number of pixels. They all have more than enough tho I would admit for a beginner camera the Nikon D3200 is pretty amazing with 24 MPs.
Pentax has the advantage that there are a whole lot of off brand (and name brand) lenses which will work with it.
Nikon and Canon probably have the most complete line of accessories tho Sony is really building up their line and a lot of the old Minolta Maxxum lenses work perfectly well on the Sony DSLRs.
That's one of the camera's I'm looking at. Our "PHD" camera's have all been Nikon's and we've been happy with those.
I'm also looking at the Canon EOS Rebel T4i (I think that's the model..) which looks nice too.
Someone up the thread said it's more about the glass (lens) than the DSLR. Is that true? If I want to zoom in from the ship to the shore (we're taking an Alaskan Cruise from Vancouver up to near Anchorage with 2 days in Denali National Park) what type of lens do I need? Or are ship to shore pic's out of the question due to distance or the lens being too expensive?
I'm trying to stay under $750 for the camera and a decent lens....
I picked up an old used Sony A100 DSLR on amazon for $200 for just that reason.
It uses all the old Minolta lenses.