Well it depends on what you want, you have your point and shoots and you have your heavy dSLRs, but remember if you want the best images possible, go for film, you can get a really nice SLR film camera, and will print far better than any digital camera will in the next say 50 years most likely.
now, for point and shoots, recently Panasonic came out with the Lumix TZ-5 which is the best in my book, my dad just bought it and the best part about it is it’s intelligent sensor, it has a 13,000 point sensor which measures the exposure in each area to get the perfect exposure, similar to Nikon’s ADR (adaptive dynamic range), basically to make HDR images without bracketing. Remember though, this is a pocket camera.
The best camera of the year so far is the Casio EX-F1, it can shoot up to 60 FPS full size images, and up to 336×96 @ 1,200 FPS (frames per second fyi) at half image size, and has 12x zoom, this isn’t a pocket camera, but once again, it sure isn’t a dSLR.
Now, dSLRs, these are the most expensive, have to maintain, and most of all not the best to cary around at times. Not only do you have to buy a body, but you have to buy lenses for it, and change the lenses, however, no matter how bottom of the line, it will ALWAYS produce better images than any pocket camera. Also, if you decide to buy and older dSLR, the farthest you should go back in years is probably 2 years, anything beyond that isn’t even up to standards anymore.
with dSLRs however you have plenty of choices, however the main (obvious) choices are Canon and Nikon. There are differences here though, Canon is far more expensive due to the way they have internal focusing, and the number of lenses you can get is EXTREMELY limited, not to mention Canons have strange crop factors. If you buy Canon prepare to expend lots of money on expensive lenses.
Nikon is the other choice, I have a D40 it’s my first personal camera i’ve owned, I love photography and it was a great choice, I’d prefer something higher or the older D50 but that’s just because they have built in AF motors in the body, the D40 and D60 models can only focus using AF-S lenses, which is similar to the Canon system.
There is a huge difference about Nikon though, you can use a lens from back in the 60s with no issue, and depending on the camera you buy, say D200, D300, and I believe D80, you can input the focal length and the aperture, and you’ll be able to get full matrix metering, however remember that lenses from back then were manual focus only.
It all grinds down to how much you enjoy photography. If you’re an artsy person and enjoy crisp clean images, a dSLR is the way to go. If you don’t want to hassle with several many pound lenses to carry around and maintenance a dSLR requires , something like the Casio or any larger point and shoot is the way to go.
Remember, MEGAPIXELS don’t mean anything when it comes to image quality, the higher the MP on a camera, the larger the images, doesn’t matter how crappy the images come out according to business people, the higher number makes people think it’s better, well it’s not; a 12 MP point and shoot will always look worse than a 6 MP dSLR no matter what. What really matters is the sensor size, and a dSLR has a far larger sensor size than any point and shoot, and remember that pocket point and shoots have the smallest sensor size, making them look the worse out of all cameras you can buy.
Sorry for the long post, but I hope it gives you some insight.
btw Jbor, Canon isn’t as passionate as Nikon, mainly because back in the 80s they decided to change everything about the camera making everything before that time a movement in the world of Canon, either you went EOS, or you stayed manual, you can’t swap the two like you can Nikon.
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