Great car and photos

The 550D... if you want to shoot video, yes. But I have had to work on photos of the 550D, and I thought I was editing photos of a point & shoot (ok, it's not _that_ bad, but I was kind of shocked at the amount of noise at ISO 100. My camera can't even shoot 100...). It seems to me as if they crammed too many pixels onto such a small sensor (Canon sensors are smaller than the rest, unless you shoot with one of the 5D or 1D variants, and except for Panasonic and Olympus). Also I really don't like the way the 3 and 4 digit Canons feel like. To me Canon gets interesting from the 2 digit models onwards, i.e. 60D, 7D, 5D and 1D.

Consider the entry level Nikons (D3100 probably, perhaps D5100). 2 of my friends shoot Nikon and they seem happy. The Pentax K-x, K-r and the just launched K-30 (more of a 60D competitor, with some features from the 7D) are also very tempting cameras. Pentax probably makes the most sense for serious amateurs. The automatic functions may not be as good as with Canon and Nikon, but the controls are better thought out (the important dials and buttons are where my fingers are, the viewfinder is usually better than elsewhere, you can use lenses that were built 40 years ago... without adapter. With even older ones are possible. The viewfinder screen on the K-30 and above can be easily replaced to assist in manual focusing, and old lenses just feel great. More solid, smoother, I like them).

That is if you don't care so much about video. If you do, then Canon is pretty much the way to go (unless you are looking at something like the D800 from Nikon, I believe that one has an uncompressed HDMI output which is something pros are craving for). Or if you already have Canon lenses (father, son, ...) that can be used on a Canon DSLR. Or if you crave for some of the lenses you can only get from Canon and perhaps Nikon, but then again those are usually extremely expensive, so I doubt it.

(To me Canon is a bit like Toyota. Overrated and overpriced, although the products are obviously good. But others offer so much more. I do love their point & shoots though. Great great great little cameras, I have 2 of them and my mother has one).

Oh my. Now I sound like a total d***, posting awful photos and talking like a pro. Anyway, all I wanted to say was check out what the others have to offer, before going for what everyone else has.