Help me pick out my camera

[cgold36]

Im in the market to pick up a new camera in the next couple weeks. I've been doing my homework and can't decide what direction I want to go into. I've been looking at the Nikon d3300, canon t5i, and canon sl1. I have some experience with dslr cameras. I used to own a Nikon d3100 and loved it but wished it had a little better video recording. I sold the camera about a year ago and now I want another one.

A little information about what I want to do with the camera is I don't want to do anything professional, but I want to do little photo shoots of cars and a lot of my friends have been getting married and I would love to take very nice pictures for them. I'm not trying to replace their professional. But I find photography a very fun hobby. One last thing that's has been making me think about a canon dslr is that my buddy has a t5i and we talked about if I got a canon we could share lens.

Thanks ahead of time for all the advice!

 

[tirediron]

Go to a store (a camera store, not a big-box store that also sells cameras) and "play" with the different models. Find out which one has a more ergonomic control layout, more intuitive menus, etc, etc... There's very little difference between Canon model 'X' and it's Nikon equivalent, and how the camera feels and works in your hands is a LOT more important than most people give it credit for.