A starting out amateur photographer

[Doju]

I'm interested in starting out a bit of photography. Nothing as a career or professionally, but I'd love to start taking pictures and having a camera slightly above my iPhone's.

As much as I'd love not to be, I unfortunately am on a budget. Around $300 for the camera.

Any recommendations on a bookbag as well?

Any photographers give me some tips on what camera to buy? I'd like it to have the "DSLR look" regardless of the caliber of the camera. For example, the Fujifilm Finepix s1500 looks like a DSLR, despite the $150 price tag. It takes nice pictures, but I want slightly more.

[iBookG4user]

The Canon Powershot G9 or G10 should probably be found at your budget used. The two of them are fantastic cameras, I've used the G9 quite a bit and find it to be quite a good little camera. Another one to look at would be the Panasonic Lumix series, as they are usually pretty good.

Although don't fall into the trap of looking solely at Megapixels though, as anything over 6 MP should be plenty unless you plan on printing quite large. And finally, take a good look at DPreview, they have a good buying guide that lets you compare cameras side by side to match your preferences.

[Zombie Acorn]

I think I got my rebel xt used for 250 + 50 for a lens, even though canon has came out with quite a few upgrades since then its still a great camera.

[splitpea]

Look for an older consumer-range DSLR. (The Rebel XT suggestion isn't bad). It will give you the opportunity to learn more about exposure, depth of field, etc, and will have more accessible manual controls than even the highest-end point-and-shoot. Megapixels are overrated (6mp is sufficient for the vast majority of purposes) and as a beginner you won't need or miss the extra features in newer cameras.