Recently decided to retire my Pentax K100 film SLR.
Looking to buy a digital one.

Looked at

1) Canon 600d
2) Nikon D5100
3) Pentax K 5

Looking for advice from people who know abit about DSLR on makes models etc

By looked at do you mean online or hands on?

The best advice I got was to make sure I went to the shop and had a little play with each one. I opted for the Canon 500D, don't use it much at all but when I do it's a good'un

Both, did my research online then went in and played around with a few, but the canon model they had wasnt working properly and couldnt get a feel for what the image quality was like

The Nikon D5100 is an excellent DSLR but have you looked at the Nikon D3200 which is newer, cheaper and arguably as well equipped? Alternatively the D3100 which is the older model but still a fine camera, with the bonus that as they are slowly replacing it, there are some excellent deals available if you shop around.

Q: have you any quality lenses for your SLR? Can you re-use them with any of these? This might help you make a decision.

I have a 550D. The 600D is more-or-less the same but with a swivel screen.

Good points:
1080p video.
General Build Quality.
General Image Quality.

Bad points:
Standard Lens kit (55mm) is not very good build quality, sluggish and noisy.

Sigma and Tamron do some very nice budget lenses for carry about purposes (< £500) that would provide a far superior alternative to the Canon kit lens options. Assuming you can budget for around 1K, spending the additional money on the lens is what I'd strongly recommend you consider.

From what I gather the choice between Nikon vs. Canon at this level is pretty insignificant. The decision is only an important one because what ever you start with is probably what you'll stick with in years to come - unless you've got money to burn. For example, if in 5 years time you have a collection of lenses and fancy a new camera you'll probably keep the lenses and buy the same manufacturer of camera body just so you can retain the use of your lens collection.

Canon do a lovely inexpensive 50mm lens (<£90) that's great for low light conditions. I use it quite a lot for indoor portrait stuff with little or no need for the flash.

Dale Photographic in the Merrion Centre should be able to sort you out with something decent, whether it be new or second hand.

Cheers mate, didn't even know they were there just been looking at the bigger firms like Jessops( which have really peed me off there online store is a joke)

Here's a suggestion; good, even old glass can be expensive. If you're on a budget and not particularly attached to your old kit it might be worth having a look on eBay to see if there's a market for it to raise some cash to put towards your new purchase.

I bought the camera with the 135mm kit zoom lens. It's OK, but once again the build quality isn't great. I had it replaced under warranty with a focus jump issue which Canon had supposedly repaired. It was particularly noticable with manual focus. They tried to pass it off as an image stabilisation issue but I proved them wrong by demonstrating the problem. Hence my advice about an alternative lens. For a £350 lens I would have hoped for better. This is a good reason to buy from a shop rather than the t'interweb; you can take is back and when you show them the issue there's no room for argument.

When I researched the kit lenses of both Canon and Nikon they were all much-of-a-muchness; OK, but not great! If I had the opportunity to buy it again I'd buy the body and a seperate lens, unless the deal for the body and kit lens wasn't much different to the body alone.

One day if I ever have the spare cash (significant spare cash required) I will get myself a couple "L" range lenses.

There's a good site I have used before for reviews of camera kithttp://www.dpreview.comrl. That might help you too.

No worries, good family run firm with plenty of knowledge & experience. I'm sure if you go in to their store they'll be able to help you out!

Cheers for that will check out the review site. Been looking at body only as per advice, but so far not significantly cheaper but would look to by a new lens with the month afters pay packet anyway! Life permitting!