Joel, I can't give you a model as mine is probably considered out of date now, but I will give you my buying principle. Whenever I buy things of value, I buy what i want. If I can't afford what i want I wait until I can. Otherwise I'll always still want that other one and end up buying it two, and now I have two of the same item and spent a lot more money. But first you have to find out what you want. What do you want the camera to do? Don't look at cameras for what they can do, find the camera that do what you want then select from them. If camera A for $300 does all that you want, why pay $400 for camera B if it does too but also has a pretty blue buttons?

You stated above, "I don't know what the most important things are that I should be on the lookout for and what to avoid", that is the first thing to answer before you even consider any camera. So before I give you any advice, I ask you, what do you want to archive with this camera?