You've gotta start somewhere, Bob. It just depends on what each person's ultimate goal is. Few do it, but it's a lot less expensive to buy your last camera first.
Personally, I actually like having a big camera with me on my trips. I don't sell or market my landscape photos, at least not as fine art like some do. It's not to make money necessarily. I like it because it takes the highest quality image that I've found and that is the best way to preserve the memory. When I look back at photos from years past, I often wish I'd had X camera or X lens then because the quality difference is so obvious. Some places are on my list to go back to simply so I can capture them with a better camera and improved skills.
With that said, if it was smaller and lighter and did the same thing, I'd be stoked. I wasn't super impressed with my foray into m4/3. The new Sony stuff sounds like it has potential, but I'll admit to being a bit anti-Sony. I used to be an electronics buyer and I just hated their entire process and the way they approached their tech. But now that
@gnwatts picked a full frame A7R up, I have to admit I'm interested. Really looking forward to hearing more about how that goes.
Tater - Before you think a ton about which camera, I'd just think a
lot about what you really want to accomplish. As others have mentioned, there are great middle of the road kind of options. I'd get one that shoots in RAW so you can start playing with editing - that's a huge aspect of moving up into the nicer cameras. You might think for thousands of dollars it would just produce a nicer image, but really you have to work harder for each one of them compared to the auto-tuned JPEGs that cheaper cameras pump out. Granted, you can set your fancy camera to do the same, but then you lose much of the real power in there.
So I guess my recommendation is either go with something cheapish but nice like a G-series Canon or go all the way and get something with interchangeable lenses. But if you do, I say go big or go home. A Canon Rebel kit is a nice intro, but if you're going to lug all that around, I'd try to work up from there to make it worthwhile. At least with some nicer glass like a good ultrawide, if not a full jump up to something like a 6D 24-105 kit (best bang for the buck right now, IMO). And remember that while a nice body is important, nice glass is probably even more important and that all adds up pretty fast.
