I'd suggest something from Nikon or Sony. they tend to have great glass. Canon uses a funky 4 color sensing CCD, and I've seen examples where their colors are a bit thrown off. other than that, you really have to see the camera for yourself. you might want to stop by dpreview.com, they've got pretty good info. and keep that FM!!! its a cool camera 
as for 'digital cameras not as good as film cameras,' they're a LOT better than some people here give them credit for. I got a Nikon D1x for xmas, and my dad, who worked in the journalism dept @ Berkley, was a working pro in his earlier years, has been shooting ever since, and has a fleet of Leica equip, liked the D1x so much that he got one for himself and hasn't used a film camera for about 6 months now. admittedly, the D1x certainly isnt in most people's price ranges, but you can't argue with what it can do once you use something like MacBibble to step it up to 10 megapixel mode (recovering horizontal resolution). and no more damn bracketing! even with difficult shots you won't have to waist film once you get a taste for what the output will be like on the LCD. that's great that you can fire off 10fps or whatever with your film camera, but it's a lot easier to get that shot the first, second or third time (instead of, say, the 15th). not to mention that scanning your negatives puts the image through two lenses, allowing for loss of sharpness, not to mention debris to be introduced. (even though my D1x has to be blown out almost every lens change because of the magnitism problem, I'd much rather do that then wait 10 minutes for something to scan and then realize that there's a big hair in the middle of the transparency).
so sure, film camera+scanner is probably the cheapest way that
you're going to get good pix done, especially since this person already has a Nikon FM, but don't dare say that digital is *that* limited.
as for 'digital cameras not as good as film cameras,' they're a LOT better than some people here give them credit for. I got a Nikon D1x for xmas, and my dad, who worked in the journalism dept @ Berkley, was a working pro in his earlier years, has been shooting ever since, and has a fleet of Leica equip, liked the D1x so much that he got one for himself and hasn't used a film camera for about 6 months now. admittedly, the D1x certainly isnt in most people's price ranges, but you can't argue with what it can do once you use something like MacBibble to step it up to 10 megapixel mode (recovering horizontal resolution). and no more damn bracketing! even with difficult shots you won't have to waist film once you get a taste for what the output will be like on the LCD. that's great that you can fire off 10fps or whatever with your film camera, but it's a lot easier to get that shot the first, second or third time (instead of, say, the 15th). not to mention that scanning your negatives puts the image through two lenses, allowing for loss of sharpness, not to mention debris to be introduced. (even though my D1x has to be blown out almost every lens change because of the magnitism problem, I'd much rather do that then wait 10 minutes for something to scan and then realize that there's a big hair in the middle of the transparency).
so sure, film camera+scanner is probably the cheapest way that
you're going to get good pix done, especially since this person already has a Nikon FM, but don't dare say that digital is *that* limited.