A new diver has no business getting anywhere near the reef with a camera.
I have a different perspective...
When my wife was a new diver she had descent buoyancy control and generally descent skills in the water (possibly because she wasn't insta-certified but rather did a proper open water course with pool sessions over the course of about six weeks and open water dives over the course of two weekends with many extra dives thrown in for good measure.)
Her only real issue when it came to diving was that she was twitchy, she never stopped fluttering, checking her air, repositioning her bc, just constantly fiddling about the entire dive.
The solution was to put a camera in her hands to get her to stay focused (no pun intended) on something other than constantly checking herself -- and it worked!
She never crashed into the reef, having the camera in her hands actually got her to really only use her fins for maneuvering.
I'm not going to say she ever became a great u/w photographer, I've seen better pictures of fish on a can of sardines. But it helped with what we called her underwater adhd.
So having said that, I don't think being a beginner diver is a contra-indication for diving with a camera.
What I would advise the OP is to start off small, as suggested, with something like a waterproof point-and-shoot that you can eventually put in a housing, add a strobe, build some basic u/w photography skills before you move up to something bigger and more expensive.
Just make sure its not getting in the way of having fun.
Cheers,