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Check out this review and sample photos from the PowerShot S10 which uses the CYGM filter - it does seem to have very low noise, and awesome image quality in general. I wonder why they stopped using it?

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canons10/

They posted a full press release with images and sensor layout diagrams, additionally there is an excellent discussion in their news forum with a lot of good information. http://www.dpreview.com/news/0706/07061401kodakhig hsens.asp

I've never heard anybody complain of wear and tear on a USB cable before.

You still haven't. I was talking about the connector on the camera: "The E20 is a few years old, and the jack is definitely getting loose..."

As for wear and tear on the shutter release button, I would think that your shutter itself would fail before the release button, but what do I know?

The E20 uses the shutter button to pre-focus and to snap. It gets used many more times than the shutter itself does; every time you look at a subject, you end up pressing that button, unless you use the manual focus, which I don't, because the camera's "eye" is sharper, and faster, than mine. The remote (of which I have several spares) moves the wear (and the stability issues) off-camera. Also, just FYI, I have lots of older gear with cranky buttons that otherwise works fine. This ranges from a clock radio that has an iffy numeric keypad to a high end stereo with heavy mechanical latched mode selectors that have become unreliable.

The only saving grace for the E20 is that I will probably abandon it before it abandons me, because the tech in this area moves extremely fast. Right now, I can't decide between the Foveon/Sigma RGB per pixel technology, or the classic (and I use that word loosely) Bayer sensor tech in cameras like the Canon line; the very high luma resolution of alternating sensor filters speaks to me, but then again, so does true RGB fidelity. Such choices to have to make. :-)

I've never heard anybody complain of wear and tear on a USB cable before.

You still haven't. I was talking about the connector on the camera: "The E20 is a few years old, and the jack is definitely getting loose..."

As for wear and tear on the shutter release button, I would think that your shutter itself would fail before the release button, but what do I know?

The E20 uses the shutter button to pre-focus and to snap. It gets used many more times than the shutter itself does; every time you look at a subject, you end up pressing that button, unless you use the manual focus, which I don't, because the camera's "eye" is sharper, and faster, than mine. The remote (of which I have several spares) moves the wear (and the stability issues) off-camera. Also, just FYI, I have lots of older gear with cranky buttons that otherwise works fine. This ranges from a clock radio that has an iffy numeric keypad to a high end stereo with heavy mechanical latched mode selectors that have become unreliable.

The only saving grace for the E20 is that I will probably abandon it before it abandons me, because the tech in this area moves extremely fast. Right now, I can't decide between the Foveon/Sigma RGB per pixel technology, or the classic (and I use that word loosely) Bayer sensor tech in cameras like the Canon line; the very high luma resolution of alternating sensor filters speaks to me, but then again, so does true RGB fidelity. Such choices to have to make. :-)

Linky

What in ze hell?

Not much different than this Wi-Fi SD card

It's gonna be hard to offer security with no user interface on the camera, and I wouldn't use it without that. Once most cameras offer built-in Wi-Fi, these little gadgets - although cool - will be overpriced and obsolete.

I guess a lot depends on whether the "point and shoot" camera you're looking for is one which is not SLR based or one which fits in a shirt pocket.

If it's the former, you might want to have a look at the Panasonic FZ- cameras. They're still somewhat smaller than most SLRs, and they don't suck. The shutter lag is around 0.009 or 0.07 seconds, assuming you don't want the camera to perform any fancy auto focus or IS. The larger number includes the time it takes to actually display the image on the LCD. The Leica lens is pretty good too, the end results aren't too bad compared to a 50mm prime lens on a 350D. The image noise at high ISOs still sucks compared to any DSLR of course, but there's simply no way to fit a large sensor in a compact camera.

If the FZ50, or even the FZ8 is too large, there's still the TZ3 and whole bunch of even smaller cameras. As far as I can tell, they all have similar shutter lag, but they aren't directly compared to SLRs in terms of image quality, and I can't comment on them myself.

No, I'm not in any way related to dpreview (or Amazon), but as I've mentioned in a post somewhere above, I do have an FZ-5 and I'm quite happy with it.

I guess a lot depends on whether the "point and shoot" camera you're looking for is one which is not SLR based or one which fits in a shirt pocket.

If it's the former, you might want to have a look at the Panasonic FZ- cameras. They're still somewhat smaller than most SLRs, and they don't suck. The shutter lag is around 0.009 or 0.07 seconds, assuming you don't want the camera to perform any fancy auto focus or IS. The larger number includes the time it takes to actually display the image on the LCD. The Leica lens is pretty good too, the end results aren't too bad compared to a 50mm prime lens on a 350D. The image noise at high ISOs still sucks compared to any DSLR of course, but there's simply no way to fit a large sensor in a compact camera.

If the FZ50, or even the FZ8 is too large, there's still the TZ3 and whole bunch of even smaller cameras. As far as I can tell, they all have similar shutter lag, but they aren't directly compared to SLRs in terms of image quality, and I can't comment on them myself.

No, I'm not in any way related to dpreview (or Amazon), but as I've mentioned in a post somewhere above, I do have an FZ-5 and I'm quite happy with it.

I guess a lot depends on whether the "point and shoot" camera you're looking for is one which is not SLR based or one which fits in a shirt pocket.

If it's the former, you might want to have a look at the Panasonic FZ- cameras. They're still somewhat smaller than most SLRs, and they don't suck. The shutter lag is around 0.009 or 0.07 seconds, assuming you don't want the camera to perform any fancy auto focus or IS. The larger number includes the time it takes to actually display the image on the LCD. The Leica lens is pretty good too, the end results aren't too bad compared to a 50mm prime lens on a 350D. The image noise at high ISOs still sucks compared to any DSLR of course, but there's simply no way to fit a large sensor in a compact camera.

If the FZ50, or even the FZ8 is too large, there's still the TZ3 and whole bunch of even smaller cameras. As far as I can tell, they all have similar shutter lag, but they aren't directly compared to SLRs in terms of image quality, and I can't comment on them myself.

No, I'm not in any way related to dpreview (or Amazon), but as I've mentioned in a post somewhere above, I do have an FZ-5 and I'm quite happy with it.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos400d/pag e20.asp

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0702/07022207eos1dmar kiiiaccs.asp

For Canon's new EOS-1D Mark III cameral:

Wireless File Transmitter WFT-E2 - Faster workflows

Responding to feedback from Wireless File Transmitter WFT-E1 users, Canon has expanded the functionality of the Wireless File Transmitter WFT-E2 to also support two-way communication via peer to peer (PTP) and HTTP protocols. Remote users can trigger the shutter button or download images from the camera via an internet browser window, dramatically reducing the time it takes from capture to publication. The Wireless File Transmitter WFT-E2 offers users a greater degree of security by allowing up to 4 types of WEP encryption as well as WPA2-PSK, which supports high security AES encryption.

USB host functionality means photographers can shoot directly to external storage media on longer shooting assignments. The unit also supports recording of GPS data - when connected to a portable GPS device, the location and time of capture is automatically added to each image as EXIF data.

Requiring no additional batteries, the Wireless File Transmitter WFT-E2 fits neatly onto the side of the EOS-1D Mark III and offers the same degree of weather resistance as the camera body.

dell is ALSO guilty:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?for um=1004&thread=22581483

no WONDER why they had 'no comment'.

Maybe there are people who plan all their purchases days or weeks in advance, but for a large number of people most small to medium purchases are done on impulse or at short notice.

I am one of those people. I hate shopping in bricks-n-mortar stores. These days, I only buy either perishable items (fruit, meat, eggs, milk, etc.) or emergency items (band-aids, toilet flanges, etc.) Nearly everything else I buy, I order online after spending hours at best, and sometimes weeks, researching what product to get. I get more useful information that way, and can select from a much broader selection of products.

Take, for example, my quest for a digital camera. If I went to the local shop, I could select from a dozen or so models. I could hold it in my hands, maybe look through the lens. Then I'd have to chose from whatever models are available from the local vendor community, which is 2 small shops, and the Big Box stores. I'd know how heavy it was, but that's about it. By comparison, online I can read reviews by people who have the various cameras, view images shot by them, go to sites like http://dpreview.com/ and see detailed analysis of the capabilities of the sensor, lens, software, outputs along with direct comparisons of static images for color reproduction, noise at the various ISO levels, resolution of detail, clarity, etc., plus all the data I'd get from the camera shop. Once I selected a camera, I would then be able to find the best price from all of the vendors everywhere in the world, even taking into account shipping costs, support after the purchase, and customer-based reviews of vendor reliability.

I use this model a bunch. Buying tools? Go online. Choosing a printer for my computer? Go online. Deciding which wine to serve to my sweetie this weekend? Go online. The prices are better, the information richer and more reliable, and I don't have to interact in meat-space with sweaty-palmed, pushy, clueless sales people. In cases like buying DVDs, resources like IMDB have enough input that they reduce the impact of one moron's opinion, so I know that I will probably like a move that got more than 7 stars. The opinion of the guy at Best Buy is spotty, at best. If there was an online grocer that serviced my area in the middle of nowhere, I would use them, too.

Of course, the strengths of the online world may help reduce/eliminate the effects of either potential SCOTUS decision. If the manufacturers restrict stuff too much in the states, I'll buy from Hong Kong, or Japan, or whatever.

If you want to compare, look here:
http://www.compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/w mp_codecs_comparison_en.html/
a little more info here:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1 000&message=21830745/
MS HD Photo is a little better than jpeg, but no better than jpeg2000.
No reason to create a new standard, except to force everyone to use your patents, etc.

>> 'RAW' is a collective name for a shitload of formats by a smaller shitload of digital camera companies.
> No, it's not. RAW = Canon's "raw" image format.

There are over a dozen raw formats: .raf (Fuji), .crw .cr2 (Canon), .kdc .dcr (Kodak), .mrw (Minolta), .nef (Nikon), .orf (Olympus), .dng (Adobe), .ptx .pef (Pentax), .arw (Sony), .x3f (Sigma)

I don't know why you think that only Canon can capitalize "raw", since all of these are commonly refered to as "RAW" format. E.g. DPReview refers to Sony's format as RAW.
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sonydslra100/page2 .asp

Not as long as Canon, it would appear. As pointed out by someone waaay up the comments.

I remember seeing a press release just recently about a successor to this (here), but I didn't realize the old technology had been around for so long.

Not as long as Canon, it would appear. As pointed out by someone waaay up the comments.

I remember seeing a press release just recently about a successor to this (here), but I didn't realize the old technology had been around for so long.

Canon's DSLRs do checksum the data, there's a verification tool as well. Of course that only works with the original uncropped data, but it does give you a fairly firm reference to which you can compare any derivative versions.

Another case where Microsoft used patents offensively: FAT drive formatting and Long Filename FAT extensions. http://www.dpreview.com/news/0312/03120403microsof tisfat.asp Doesn't seem so defensive here.

I see 16 GB CompactFlash but not 16 GB Memory Stick PRO or 16 GB Memory Stick PRO Duo. Where are you finding this?

It's not just the crappy PAS cameras, even a $5000 or $10000 camera suffers from this problem. It has something to do with field of view, and something called the barrel effect or perspective distortion. Unless you have some camera with a magic othographic 0-degree FOV lens, you're never going to have plan-like accuracy in photographs.

But it is possible to overlap and tile pictures or use as much zoom as possible to reduce the effect. A bit of a kludge, but that's better than nothing when you don't have plans to go from.

Regardless I think it's silly that one would need special software to do this. If you have a known reference such as a yard or meter stick in the photo, it's not much beyond doing a bit of multiplication to figure out actual sizes. If the software really does anything special, it'd have to know the exif data and camera specs to determine focal angles and such, then it just might be able to compensate for perspective distortion of objects on a common plane.

If you want high quality digital pictures, you must get a better digital camera. A point and shoot (such as a Olympus 7.1MP) will produce significantly lower image quality than a DSLR. You may be surprised, but a lower MP DLSR will take better pictures than a higher MP point and shoot.

Check out the reviews and especially the sample photos of the following:
Olympus E-330 Point and Shoot (7.4MP) Like to yours
Nikon D50 DSLR (6MP)
Canon XTi DSLR (10MP)

If you want high quality digital pictures, you must get a better digital camera. A point and shoot (such as a Olympus 7.1MP) will produce significantly lower image quality than a DSLR. You may be surprised, but a lower MP DLSR will take better pictures than a higher MP point and shoot.

Check out the reviews and especially the sample photos of the following:
Olympus E-330 Point and Shoot (7.4MP) Like to yours
Nikon D50 DSLR (6MP)
Canon XTi DSLR (10MP)

If you want high quality digital pictures, you must get a better digital camera. A point and shoot (such as a Olympus 7.1MP) will produce significantly lower image quality than a DSLR. You may be surprised, but a lower MP DLSR will take better pictures than a higher MP point and shoot.

Check out the reviews and especially the sample photos of the following:
Olympus E-330 Point and Shoot (7.4MP) Like to yours
Nikon D50 DSLR (6MP)
Canon XTi DSLR (10MP)

http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Image_Techniques/N ight_Spots_01.htm

This should help. Its for long exposure shots but the same concept applies. Keep in mind that your camera sensor won't always show the same noise. So you'll probably end up doing this for every shot.

An article about correcting CCD variation

Set yourself apart by creating incredible effects at an even more incredible pace. Powerful non-destructive effects, fast versioning, and the ability to design your own templates for quick content creation allow you to distinguish yourself from the competition. Projects go from concept to creation faster. Facility throughput increases. Whether you are working with SD or HD video, or in a true file-based, data-centric environment, Autodesk Smoke is designed to accelerate your creative workflow.

Although it may be exactly what I'm looking for in order to move away from Windows, I just can't read Autodesk's marketing crap. It's just too stomach wrenching fluffy. Even when I try, it doesn't really say anything. They don't even show you a demo - you have to ask for a salesperson.

It appears that this product is pitched towards larger commercial settings or is in early beta so you can't actually see anything (don't look behind that curtain please). Oh, and pricing - if you have to ask how much it costs, you apparently don't need it. At any rate, this product seems to be pitched in the opposite direction of everything else here - closed, expensive and tied to hardware.

Oh well, I don't like Autodesk much anyway.

As an aside, there have been a number of threads on Digital Photography Reviews to the effect that if Linux DOES manage a digital photography workflow that even gets close to Windows or Apple (read something better than GIMP and some reasonable RAW file viewer) along with decent color profiling, then there would be a significant Linux adoption. It may get there in a few years....

http://www.dpreview.com/

or

http://www.fredmiranda.com/reviews/

For DSLR users, I think Sony, Nikon and Canon all produce devices that can do this.

There are others options too - many PDA's have this capability, e.g. the iMate JAMin or the eten g500. Some mobile phones with location based services also provide this facility, although the accuracy depends on the location technology used (might not be that important for holiday snapshots?)

I agree though - with the cost of GPS these days, it should be a standard feature on pretty much all digital cameras - or at least implement bluetooth / usb connectivity to an external GPS receiver.

That Xerox page has photos taken with a 10-year-old digital camera! Other photos on the page were taken with a Kodak camera from a generation after that, but still not from this millenium.

My guess is this is just some research project from ages ago that never went anywhere. If they developed it that long ago, wouldn't it have become a product that we'd have heard of by now?

dom

That Xerox page has photos taken with a 10-year-old digital camera! Other photos on the page were taken with a Kodak camera from a generation after that, but still not from this millenium.

My guess is this is just some research project from ages ago that never went anywhere. If they developed it that long ago, wouldn't it have become a product that we'd have heard of by now?

dom

Don't be too hard on Sony. I recently had to get Canon to replace my PowerShot A70 with a A530 (better res, flimsy camera body) because the image sensor was defective. It was a known defect but they couldn't come up with the replacement part for 2 months.

That known defect in your Canon was a SONY CCD fault. The same one that affected Fujifilm, Konica Minolta, Nikon, Olympus and probably a few others to boot.

Don't be too hard on Sony. I recently had to get Canon to replace my PowerShot A70 with a A530 (better res, flimsy camera body) because the image sensor was defective. It was a known defect but they couldn't come up with the replacement part for 2 months.

That known defect in your Canon was a SONY CCD fault. The same one that affected Fujifilm, Konica Minolta, Nikon, Olympus and probably a few others to boot.

Don't be too hard on Sony. I recently had to get Canon to replace my PowerShot A70 with a A530 (better res, flimsy camera body) because the image sensor was defective. It was a known defect but they couldn't come up with the replacement part for 2 months.

That known defect in your Canon was a SONY CCD fault. The same one that affected Fujifilm, Konica Minolta, Nikon, Olympus and probably a few others to boot.

Don't be too hard on Sony. I recently had to get Canon to replace my PowerShot A70 with a A530 (better res, flimsy camera body) because the image sensor was defective. It was a known defect but they couldn't come up with the replacement part for 2 months.

That known defect in your Canon was a SONY CCD fault. The same one that affected Fujifilm, Konica Minolta, Nikon, Olympus and probably a few others to boot.

Don't be too hard on Sony. I recently had to get Canon to replace my PowerShot A70 with a A530 (better res, flimsy camera body) because the image sensor was defective. It was a known defect but they couldn't come up with the replacement part for 2 months.

That known defect in your Canon was a SONY CCD fault. The same one that affected Fujifilm, Konica Minolta, Nikon, Olympus and probably a few others to boot.

The 36-bit color data captured by Canons in RAW mode is to capture finer differentiation in colors to make gradients more smooth, particularly in allowing you more leeway in editing while maintaining smooth gradients in skin tones. While 36 bit data could theoretically provide dramatically better dynamic range, it doesn't. The limit to the dynamic range recorded by the camera is its sensor, not it's file format. You do get slightly better dynamic range recording in RAW, but by slightly, I mean 0.3 EV. So there's some, but this slight benefit is due to minor thresholding to increase contrast that the camera performs when it converts to JPEG, thereby throwing away a tiny bit of differentiation in the highs. This, like all the data captured by the sensor, is maintained in RAW format and can be exploited by changing the exposure on a RAW. So the tiny bit of extra dynamic range doesn't come from the extra bits or the RAW format, but from the fact that the camera intentionally ditches a tiny bit of information when it converts to JPEG, because this usually enhances the image's appearance.

Also, the additional bits here aren't even being used in a way that can increase dynamic range. Dynamic range is the ratio from the darkest black to the lightest white recorded. Whether you record your picture in 8 bits per channel JPEG or 12 bits per channel RAW, the black point and white point are still the same. You just get a lot more colors in between those points. There are High Dynamic Range file formats, but I've never seen a consumer digital camera that uses those, because the sensors can't capture that much dynamic range (yet) anyway. If you have a still subject and a still camera, you can take a series of bracketed exposures (probably at +/- 3ev) and then use Photoshop CS2 (or probably some other software, I think GIMP does this) to merge them into one HDR file.

All that said, you're certainly right that color negative film gives you a lot more exposure latitude than digital camera sensors. Interestingly, the dynamic range of film is less than that of a digital camera sensor. That is, the highest value captured by a digital image sensor is further separated in brightness from the darkest value than it is on film. Yet you're entirely correct in what you're saying about exposure latitude. The key thing is that color negative film has a highly non-linear response to brightness, so it achieves some differentiation in the values it records for a much larger range of input brightness (dynamic range of the subject). That is, it compresses the dynamic range of the scene much more heavily than a digital sensor does, even though it records a smaller range of values to represent that scene. Yet it does this without compromising contrast in correctly exposed photographs, by performing the majority of its compression at the extremes of the exposure range, and using a large amount of recorded dynamic range for values near the middle of the exposure. It's a great feature, and digital still has a ways to go to fully match it.

All thing considered, I still prefer digital.

In an unrelated topic, note that, since it's nice to have 48 bit chrominence, especially for editing purposes, and it's nice to have 48 or possibly even 96 bits luminance for HDRI, and camera's megapixels keep going up, we may have some really huge image files sometime in the future. Good thing storage keeps going up too.

The Canon Rebel XTi has a self cleaning sensor.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0608/06082416canoneos 400drebelxti.asp

A good forum for all digital camera stuff is Digital Photography Review, or at least the site's forums. The people who use it are all pretty helpful.

After reading TFA, consulting with several DSLR-owning friends, I just ordered a 6.3MP Fuji FinePix F30. One of the main selling points: ISO 3200 "at full resolution", and a remarkably low noise even at high ISOs. I considered the Canon SD800 IS, which provides image stabilization, but can't the the low-light tricks that the Fuji F30 can.

Fuji F30 + 1GB xD card = a hair under $300, and there's a $50 rebate, which you can use to buy a lens hood in the springtime when the rebate check arrives.

Anyway, ISO 3200 for under $300 ($250 if you believe in the rebate fairy) seemed like an excellent deal on a pretty good light-catcher.

-Mark

That means if your camera is hanging around your neck and in the OFF position, and you see a three-legged man riding a unicycle towards you, you can quickly turn the camera on and snap the shot

I like taking pictures. P&S and SLR. Even like it better when digital. I like my DP&S and I'd love to have a DSLR. The one thing that prevented me from buying one is the 'field of view crop' aka 'focal length magnifier/multiplier'.
Top of the range cameras have a full size chip, the Canon D5 prosumer DSLR has one. http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos5d/
Any thoughts on that?

The newer 400d has most of the features of the 30d at a much lower price (and a few of its own, like the anti-dust). If you're a beginner it's a better buy.

However if you're an absolute beginner or don't use your camera often and don't need the features of an SLR, the compacts have never been better value. What you won't get out of a compact is fast shutter speed (if you're shooting anything moving quickly like wildlife or sports, go for the DSLR), light sensititivity. With the DSLR you don't get movie mode, and though beginners can take nice shots on auto mode in good conditions, there's a lot more to master.

One other thing to consider is availability of lenses, servicing and accessories. Nikon make good cameras but I've had awful service experiences from their agents. What's worse good lenses tend to be scarce compared to say Canon. The ergonomics of the Nikon are fantastic though.

Before you buy always check out the review sites (and their forums) for the latest info. Some of the best.

http://www.dpreview.com/
http://www.steves-digicams.com/
http://www.dcresource.com/

DSLRs are still a pricey investment when you consider total cost of ownership, accessories etc. Be aware the shutters don't last forever (a few tens of thousands of shots before you need a service). Also be aware that if you want to go pro, or take razor sharp pictures you're going to have to invest big money in glass , particularly for longer focal lengths (typically a few thousand dollars though you won't have to buy it all at once - I'm still using crappy consumer lenses for this reason). Bottom line is that there's no other kind of camera that is quite so versatile particularly for action/wildlife.

DSLR advantages:
- Very versatile, flexible
- Image quality fantastic with the right lens and once you learn to use the camera
- Must have for sports/action

DSLR disadvantages:
- Only one I'm aware of with a movie mode. Don't buy a DSLR if you want to do video clips
- Price (not just purchase price of camera, but accessories, maintenance)
- Not as light weight as some of the compacts

Parent is right - I've got the converse situation. My Canon IXUS 50 is a great little camera with a rugged metal body and a decent control set. I can even do some manual tricks with it. However, it's got the tiny lens and tiny CCD, and consequently there's only so much you can achieve with it.

Still, the sheer ability to drop my camera in my pocket without bothering to think about its weight or inconvenience has meant that I have had my camera on hand to take some very memorable and artistic shots, with just a little patience. I intend to buy a DSLR (Nikon's new offerings are attractive - D80?) but purchasing a point-and-shoot digicam first is a Very Good Idea.

It comes down to what you want, or need, to achieve. My opinion? Take whatever camera you have wherever you go, and keep taking photos. I don't care if it's a mobile phone camera or a Hasselblad, just be creative and get used to setting up your shots. Photography isn't so much about the tool as it is about the photographer.

I have looked at the other models, and right now, I don't see any that have told me "upgrade to me!" other than the "holy crap, 4k!" Nikon D2Xs.

Please, check out http://www.dpreview.com/ before you purchase a camera. No, seriously. When I was a salesdroid, I recommended -everyone- check that site at least once before spending $money on camera.

I saw the D80, and I looked at "What does it offer?" well, okay, its 10mp vs 6mp. But thats not enough to make me buy it. The D80 uses SD cards vs the CF/MD cards of the D70. No benefit there. I have $500 in microdrives. The extra resolution is nice, but not -by it self- enough. A 4x6 image only needs a "3mp" area to be displayed at "80% of humans will never discern it from film"

As a former salesman, you need to ask "What is my end result?" if the answer is "To send pics to grandma" Then -ANY- digital camera will do it. DSLR's bring forth the power of film cameras. If you don't need that power, you don't need a DSLR.

I have a half dozen lenses for my camera. But I'm a semi-pro photographer. A situation that inspires me to get a $400 lens, you might not feel the same on.

Go, Decide for yourself. I can lay out ten thousand reasons why I love my rig and gear. The will -NOT- apply to you. Such is art.

In answer to 1 through 8, wait a week. Rumor has it that Nikkon's about to anounce the D40 (leaked images all over - check out dpreview.com).

By dropping the sensor resolution way down and ditching the bells and whistles you wouldn't find in similarly priced compacts either, they're looking at launching the first sub $500 DSLR.

For digital compact users who think DSLRs are too expensive - it's no around the price of a decent digital compact, no more.

For film SLR users who think DSLRs are too expensive, it's down to a few dozen rolls of film price difference and far less than the cost of a single great lens. Shoot clear of about a thousand shots, you'll save money with a DSLR.

As for power consumption, I'm not sure what's holding you back?

Batteries are rechargable so there's no real cost.

They last a reasonable length of time. A battery grip like the "big ED" holds a pair of batteries so it's down to one change every couple of hours.

Changing batteries is no more painful than changing film. If you shoot at any kind of speed you'll have to change rolls of film far more frequently than you'll have to change batteries. If you don't shoot that fast, your camera will go to idle mode and you'll get many hours of use out of a single battery.

Finally, yes, great film is still great. But, aside from its price, there are two main arguments against it:

1) No instant feedback. Say you're using ISO 3200 film to capture fast falling water droplets. Until you develop the film, you've no idea if you actually caught the instant. With digital, the proof's right there for review. It kind of sucks to finally develop film only to realize you didn't catch what you thought you did and have no way to practically recreate the shoot.

2) OK, you've loaded your camera with ISO 3200 film for a specific shot. The building rumbles, a plane has crashed outside. You spend the next couple of minutes trying to wind your film through, get it out without ruining your existing shots, searching for the ISO 200 that you didn't think to bring with you anyway. By the time you're ready to shoot, the drama of the once in a lifetime shot has long since past. Your buddy with a DSLR slides the dial to ISO 200, steps outside and gets the award winning shot. Sure, planes crashing are extreme examples - but life's filled with amazing unexpected moments that DSLRs let you get whilst changing film will miss many of them.

The world's moved on. Those arguments were fair enough for the first couple of generations of DSLRs. Honestly, it's now reached the point where it's like saying, "Steam gives better torque than internal combustion engines. I'm not going to buy one of those new fangled cars when my stanley steamer car works just fine." If you're determined to reinforce your preconceptions, you can probably just about find justification - but the rest of the world's moved on and for good reason.

here's what I wrote about it (I wrote on photog forum since that was my main interest - photo processing stuff):

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?for um=1004&thread=20378448

in short, these things didn't work for me:

- avira antivir (threat to MS on their own 'defender' ?)
- monaco optix xr pro (screen calibrator 'puck'; aka 'colorimeter'. pro photog guys NEED this)
- oem nero6 (I need that for lightscribe work. MS doesn't do LS, I don't think, and sadly neither does unix)
- cisco vpn (I use that to login to work remotely. this is a must-have for me.)

it also didn't like my epson scanner (1640su). a very standard and high quality flatbed scanner - not on the supported list.

it took 4 hours to do an upgrade (at the MS building, on sunday, yesterday) on an amd64 x2 3800 dualcore system. sigh.

its good that I cloned my disk before I brought my box over to them. that disk will get scrubbed and put back on the shelf and I'm back to using XP for pshop/cs2 work - where ALL my hardware and sw continues to work.

zero reason to upgrade to vista. zero. in fact, it brings me backwards and forces me to re-buy perfectly good hardware. that color puck was $300. I will NOT be re-buying THAT again - it works fine in xp and does what its supposed to.

vista is very close to shipping. and there are MAJOR failings. this does not bode well.

And getting the system to render the left and right views mirror-imaged so they come out correctly in the attached mirrors is just a software problem.

Actually, I'd be surprised if they didn't already sell privacy barriers for laptops that double as screen protectors when the laptop is closed, with a bonus panel for the top to cut down on glare from overhead lighting. The closest I've found is this laptop hood (scroll down) that folds like those collapsible windshield sunscreens.

You know, if they made them in yellow, you'd look like you're about to be eaten by a Pac-Man.

(The ones for camera LCD screens will make you look like you're pointing it the wrong way.)

We're talking about dynamic range, which isn't related to the aperture range of the camera/lens combo except that both are usually measured in f-stops.

Dynamic range in this context is the range of intensities that the sensor can capture accurately in one image.

For example, say you're shooting into the sun, and have something silhouetted in front of it. If you have enough dynamic range you can pull detail from all parts of the silhouetted area, and the sky at the same time. If you have insufficient dynamic range you'll clip either the shadows/highlights or both, resulting in areas with no real image information - flat white or solid black in other words.

Generally speaking larger photosites should result in better dynamic range, as the signal to noise ratio should be better with larger photosites - all else being equal.

More on dynamic range here

"Even with todays current range of digital cameras massive images are possible -- such as the amazing 720 Megapixel image of Sydney Harbour"

To be fair ~ That image was made with 169 images from a Canon EOS 10D that has 6.3 Megapixels and then the multiple images were stitched together using AutPan Pro.