Originally Posted by
manneca
Here's my recommendation for the OP. The Canon rebel or similar entry dslr from Nikon. A wide to normal zoom and a telephoto zoom. And yes digital. This is a vacation. S/he will want to post pics on Facebook or his/her blog. You can't do that easily with film and certainly not while on vacation. Then if s/he become an enthusiast s/he can upgrade to whatever makes sense at the time and will have a better idea of what s/he wants. I'm a Canon person cause that's what I started with (film).
That's a nice recommendation, which I would wholeheartedly agree with, but Nikon doesn't make a wide to normal zoom that autofocuses on the D40 or D60 except a huge f2.8 lens that costs well over $1000. They only make wide to tele zooms that are pretty lousy at the extreme wide end. That's my entire point. Their 2 wide to normal zooms include one that won't AF on their low end DSLRs, and the aforementioned huge expensive beast I mentioned above.