Hi all.

I hope you can help me - i'm a complete novice, and I am looking for a camera suitable for taking photos of moving animals (particuarly whales and dolphins, from a boat) - so the shutter speed has to be good.

It also needs to have a decent zoom.

I've used high quality canon/nikon cameras with telephoto lenses before and taken some great shots, but my budget (and travelling luggage allowance!) won't stretch that far!

My budget is ideally less than £400 (although the cheaper the better!). I don't have a preference between DSLR and compact - if you can advise me on a compact with a good zoom and a fast shutter speed i'd happily consider that. If you advise a DSLR, should I keep the lense that comes with a new camera body, or try and find the camera body second hand and buy a different lense?

Thanks in advance for your help!