Point-and-Shoot or SLR Camera - What Should I Buy?

When you come to buy your first SLR camera, you can become very jumbled because there are so many digital SLR cameras on the market. Both Nikon and Canon strove to control the market and provide photographers with professional digital SLR cameras and photography equipment that will make them come back for more. For the professional photographer it's very likely very easy to choose, it is either Nikon or Canon and that's it, even some professional photographers choose Olympus SLR cameras and gear.

Buy an Affordable SLR Entry Level Camera
If you are a new photographer and don't understand that much about photography and SLR equipment, it can be very hard to make a selection. Most of the entry-level photographers don't choose to buy the full frame SLR cameras as their primary camera. If you decide to go to the Nikon you have the possibility to choose between the Nikon D90 SLR or D40. The Nikon D40 is the most low-priced SLR camera for new photographers, which are coming from Point-and-Shoot consumer digital cameras. If you choose the Canon path, you can go and buy the affordable entry-level SLR camera, the Canon 450D or Canon 500D.

Nikon D40 - Affordable Entry Level SLR Camera for Beginners

Both companies, Nikon and Canon have great interchangeable lenses in terms of optical quality  (sharpness, build quality, focus speed etc.). However, you can also have a look on Pentax new DSLR camera called Pentax K-x. Pentax is probably the underdog of the SLR market. But when you buy Pentax body, you get plenty of characteristics that only enthusiast SLR cameras has. After reading many SLR camera reviews and compare prices and features from both Nikon, Canon, Pentax, I came to conclusion that Pentax is a great choice for new photographers. Of course when you buy a new camera, especially DSLR camera, you need to think twice before deciding. Because when you invest a lot of money in lenses in other camera accessories specific for a specific model, you probably would not make the switch after couple of, if you regret it.


NIkon D40 - Great Value!

Nikon D40 is a great SLR camera for its value. It takes amazingly sharp images with high details and contrast (of course you need a good lens to go with it). Some people like point-and-shoot cameras because they have a built in Wi-Fi antenna, which gives you the option to shift photographs straight to your computer without a USB cable. And if you want this feature in DSLR, you'll probably be going to pay some extra cash.

Benefits of Point & Shoot Cameras
Point-and-shoot consumer cameras have their own benefits. Consumer Point-and-Shoot cameras are easy to carry because there are small, so you can take them everywhere you go. Of course you a limited in how creative you can be with the P&S consumer camera. If you love to take photographs with blurred background with shallow depth-of-field (Bokeh), you can forget about doing it with the Point-and-Shoot consumer camera. Ordinarily, consumer cameras are not that fast. You can miss some great shots, only because the camera was slow and couldn't  focus fast enough to take a shot.

Alternatively, if you have a tight budget, you can search online for secondhand SLR cameras from Nikon and Canon, but consider that SLR shutter has a limited amount of shots that you can take with it. In entry-level SLR cameras, it is usually between 50,000 to 100,000 shots, and in professional SLR cameras it is usually between150,000 and up, depends on the camera model.

High ISO - Shoot in Low Ligh Conditions
The other advantage of using in SLR camera, is that ability to shoot in very low light conditions. Because you can bump up the ISO sensitivity, you can get sharp and clear images when shooting at night or indoors, where there is not enough amount of flight.

Shoot HD Videos
At the past, there was one advantage that consumer point and shoot cameras have over SLR cameras, and that the video recording option. However, today, most recent SLR cameras offer the ability to shoot high definition (HD) videos too. So it is no longer an issue when deciding if you want to buy a P&S camera or a more advanced SLR camera.

If you look at the prices of both consumer cameras and professional DSLR cameras, you can see that the prices shrank over the years, and today you can buy an entry-level SLR camera for a very low price (with lens of course). If it was me, I would go and buy myself a new entry-level SLR camera instead of a point and shoot camera.

Compact SLR Cameras
If the size worries you, you can look into the 4/3 standard cameras from Olympus and Panasonic, like the Panasonic DMC-GF1 or the Olympus EP-1 Pen series. They have created some very compact SLR cameras, which are actually the same size as larger P&S cameras and their optics can compete against larger in size SLR cameras. The 4/3 standard cameras will build from the ground up for digital photography. Everything was optimized to bring the best image quality to life small and compact reflex cameras, what's was impossible before.