Hey, i kind of want to get into photography. Its always interested me but i never had the drive to start doing it.

But what i was wondering is, whats a good, not extremely exspenive but not a piece of shit camera that would be good for a beginner like myself.

Maybe ill spend about 400? Any help will be appreciated.

Well if you feel like adding a little more to that budget than an entry level dslr could be something of interest for you Check out the stickied guide that blackrose made: http://forums.d2jsp.org/index.php?showtopic=27757968&f=265

If you'd rather start out cheaper and shoot automatic than I'd suggest going to DPreview.com and looking at their reviews. They helped me decide on my first p&s Also, if you're looking for something in between a p&s and a dslr (both in price and quality), than I'd suggest looking into the Canon G series. I personally used a Canon G9 before moving to my Nikon D80 and it performed flawlessly

Good luck with your search.

nikon d40 or d60. the difference is the megapixel size

That's put very bluntly. I don't know the exact differences in my head, but as I recall the D40 misses out on lots of features that are present on the D60 such as BKT and certain lighting options (needs reference). For the money difference I think I'd go for the D40 as I'm not sure if the extra cost makes up for certain features. Than again, I'd personally be wary over buying a dlsr without an auto-focus engine unless I knew for sure that the handful of lenses I'd be using with it all had auto-focus engines of their own.

As suggested before, it all really comes down to personal preference on functions. I'd suggest reading different guides on cameras in your price-range.

Hmmmm, this sounds all good.
I guess nikon will be my first prospect, ill definetly check everything you guys said out.

But also, i know nothing about focusing and such so i feel like an automatic camera would be better for me to start out.

Like i said, im extremely knew to this lol. Any more opinions and help will be awesome guys.

Well that's the beauty of dslrs, you can shoot in full automatic and than slowly move over to shooting manual in your own speed. Although I personally went straight for manual when I got a D80, this was also because I had already had practice setting a camera manually on my G9. Imho I would atleast aim to get a camera which will let you play around with iso, shutter-speed and aperture even if you want to be shooting automatic in the beginning so that in the future when you are ready to develop your photography you can do so without having to immediately burn even more cash

It is not a DLSR, it only looks like one.