I'm thinking of buying entry level DSLR Nikon D3500. I haven't used DSLR before, so I'm not sure if it is a good decision to buy DSLR. I would like to know if with this camera I can shoot portraits with blured background such as on the new smartphones with two cameras. Another thing I want to know if buying DSLR is good for beginners in photography and amateur photographers and is it worth the money.

I'm new in this community, so I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this question.
['https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/108713', 'https://photo.stackexchange.com', 'https://photo.stackexchange.com/users/85164/']
**It's not the camera, it's the lens.**

If you want a cheap and good option for shooting portrait pictures, you should definitely purchase in addition to a DSLR, a 50mm f/1.8 "nifty fifty" lens. Do expect to spend $100-$200 for the lens.

50mm is about optimal for portraits, because the relatively long 50mm focal length on crop sensor cameras is long enough to obtain blurred background while being short enough that the distance to the subject need not be excessive.

At 50mm, the kit zoom probably has f/5.6 aperture. A nifty fifty has f/1.8 aperture, which is more than 3x the difference. Three times the background blur with a nifty fifty.

Even an expensive (and heavy and large!) zoom (17-55mm f/2.8, $700-$1000) cannot match a nifty fifty (50mm f/1.8, $100-$200).

Also, the f/1.8 aperture is useful in low light no flash situations: the f/1.8 collects 9.68x the amount of light than the f/5.6 (@50mm) zoom.
Is an entry level DSLR going to shoot nice portrait pictures? By itself, *no*, absolutely not.

It's easy to make the joke that the camera by itself just sits there and doesn't take pictures at all, being an inanimate object and all. Of course, we know what you actually mean, but there's really some truth to that. A DSLR is by nature a flexible tool, and that includes the flexibility to *get bad results* as well as good ones. So, in a very real way, whether you get nice pictures is up to you, not the camera.

If you put some time, effort, and brain-power into learning how to operate a DSLR *and to understand fundamental concepts about light and composition*, you can **absolutely** get better results with a DSLR (entry level or above) than with a phone camera.

However, if you just want to snap pictures without learning anything or working for each shot, a high-end smartphone is guaranteed to produce results you'll be happier with 99% of the time.

**Spending your money on a DSLR (or other interchangeable lens camera) and hoping that that alone will produce good photographs is a recipe for frustration and disappointment.**

You say: 

> 
> Another thing I want to know if buying DSLR is good for beginners in photography and amateur photographers and is it worth the money.
> 
> 
> 

and fundamentally, to answer this, you need to know if you want to actually be a *beginner in photography* — that is, someone who is *starting on the path to something bigger*. Do you want to be an *amateur* in the true sense of "someone who does something because they love it"?

If the answer is yes, then it's probably worth quite a bit of money (and in fact, I'd suggest starting beyond so-called "entry level" cameras — see [Are there disadvantages to a prosumer camera for a beginner, aside from cost?](https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/5883/are-there-disadvantages-to-a-prosumer-camera-for-a-beginner-aside-from-cost)).

On the other hand, if you mean "someone who doesn't know much and doesn't care to" (a [dabbler](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/319354/whats-a-word-for-someone-with-low-level-of-knowledge-in-an-area-and-no-intenti), perhaps), then without even knowing your financial situation I can say that no, it would not be worth the money.