Buying a digital camera - what to consider

That is a huge question. My advice would be to get a decent dSLR camera (a used 6mp would be fine) and a good prime lens for it like a 50mm f/1.8. You can do this for 500 bucks or so. There's nothing scary about a SLR camera, especially if you are going to take a class. It's just a light box with a light meter. The lens is more important.

Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Pentax, Sony, all make fine cameras so don't sweat the brands too much. 

Whatever you get, it should have a fully manual mode so that you can control it. 

I do not totally agree that a camera is a light box and a light meter, but a device that captures light emitted by objects on a medium that when processed reproduces the original image seen in the viewfinder. Digital technology has greatly eliminated the need for film. The great difference between a film camera and a digital camera is that a digital camera is actually a computer designed to  capture light and turn it into pixels. So the greater the amount of pixels, measured in megapixels (millions of pixels) a camera can capture the higher the resolution, hence its ability to reproduce finer details.  Since the technology advances very fast, it's recommended to by the highest resolution camera that you can afford, so that you don't become obsolete very fast. Today, a 10 megapixel camera is close enough to the top of the line, but it's not recommended to go lower than 6 megapixels. Of course, no matter how sophisticated your camera is, if you have poor quality lenses, your images will suffer. As for the brand, it may be more a question of preferences. There are differences, but way beyond the scope of this post.

A Thing to remember about brands. In my opinion Cannon and Nikon are the front runners with Sony like a inch behind. The other brands mentioned are good brands as well but the amount of 'after-market' products for them is not the same. Cannon and Nikon have a lot of support for after market parts.

Many things you should consider like weight & size, is that compatibe to PictBridge, the output photo quality. I got a reference for choosing cameras I think it will help you to decide

Source : http://www.studiotorres21.com

You should def check out http://www.cameta.com because they have so many great cameras for a good discounted price. I would go with a canon Rebel i like this camera a lot and i think that it will grow on you pretty quickly once you start getting into photography more. I bought this camera and it has gave me great pictures with high quality!