Another quirk of the dSLR involves the storage methods you choose and use. You may have more options and a few more pitfalls than your point-and-shoot toting friends. This section will reveal a few of them. First, most point-and-shoot and EVF cameras can use just a single type of storage, whether it’s CompactFlash, SD card, xD card, or MemoryStick. However, many digital SLRs have multiple memory card slots. Some cameras can accept both a CompactFlash card as well as an SD Mirrors and focus screens:

Handle with caution

You won’t find many tips for cleaning your dSLR’s mirror or focus screens, other than to use a blast of air. That’s because a bit of dust on either one of them is unlikely to affect the operation of your camera, and both are easily scratched. If you become obsessed over mirror or screen dust that you can’t easily remove, consider sending the camera back to the vendor for cleaning. Wiping with lens paper, swabs, or cleaning liquids is likely to do more harm than good. card. Olympus and Fuji, because the xD cards they are promoting have not caught on as quickly as they would have liked, are forced to support CompactFlash media as well in their higherend cameras. I don’t expect to see digital SLRs that accept three or more card formats in the near future, but I wouldn’t be surprised if more of them appear that accept two types, or which have multiple slots for a pair of the same kind of media.

Key Considerations – Here are some of the things to consider when choosing digital storage for your dSLR:

■ Size. CompactFlash are slightly larger than the alternative media, but probably more rugged, too. The larger size isn’t particularly more difficult to tote around (compared to the volume consumed by a brick of film), and not quite as easy to lose. The smallest card in wide use, the xD card, is less than an inch square, and I’ve managed to mislay mine more than once.

■ Capacity. Don’t expect one format or another to retain a capacity advantage for very long, but at the time I write this, CompactFlash cards that hold 8G or more are available (if expensive), while SD and xD cards trail a bit behind. Sony MemorySticks bring up the rear, although MemoryStick Pro cards with MagicGate can top 4G. If maximum capacity is important to you, keep track of the latest developments among the vendors, realizing that the top capacity cards are likely to be the most expensive.

■ Form factor. As I’ve mentioned several times before, CompactFlash cards are available in both Type I and Type II configurations. Type II cards are thicker, and won’t fit in older digital cameras that have only the thinner, Type I slot. That may mean that you can use only older, lower-capacity CompactFlash cards. Fortunately, SanDisk has introduced a 4G memory card in the original Type I size. If you’re using a digital SLR that has an original Type I slot, make sure your higher capacity card is of this variety.

■ Cost. CompactFlash-sized mini hard drives tend to be the least expensive option for storage over 1GB, often half as much as a solid-state CompactFlash card of the same capacity. If you’re looking for a 4GB or larger card, a mini hard drive may be your best choice from a cost standpoint, although they are a bit less rugged than their solid-state counterparts. SD cards recently have been priced at about 10 percent more than CompactFlash cards of the same size, with xD cards at an extra 10 percent premium over that. Larger capacity Sony MemoryStick Pro cards can be significantly more expensive than any of these.

■ Eggs in one basket syndrome. Opting for large memory cards over several smaller ones does more than increase your costs on a per-megabyte basis (a 4G card is often more expensive than 4 cards of 1G capacity). You’re also increasing your exposure to loss of images if you lose a card or the media becomes unreadable. Some photographers like to pop in a single card and then shoot all day without the need to switch to a different card. Others prefer to swap out cards at intervals, and keep the exposed memory extra safe. (If all your eggs are in one basket, watch that basket very carefully!)

Using multiple cards is a good way to segregate your images by topic or location. If you’re on vacation in Europe, you can use a new card for each city (just as you might shoot one or two rolls of film in each location). Or, photograph cathedrals on one card, castles on a second, landscapes on a third, and native crafts on a fourth.

I tend to prefer using a handful of 1G cards over working with one or more large memory cards. With a 6-megapixel dSLR, I can shoot 150 or more photos in RAW format per 1G card (a lot more than I got with 36-exposure rolls of film), and don’t need to swap media very often except when I’m shooting sports. As dSLR resolution increases, the size of a “small” memory card will creep upwards. With my next upgrade to a 12-megapixel model, I’ll probably consider 2G cards the smallest practical size.

■ Speed. When choosing a card, evaluate your needs and the write speed of the card you’re considering. As I mentioned in Chapter 2 and will note again in Chapter 8, for most kinds of photography the write speed of the card has little effect on your picture taking. An exception might be if you’re shooting sports sequences, or if you’re shooting RAW or TIFF files and your camera is particularly slow in saving these files. (I recently tested a camera that took as long as 30 seconds to write a TIFF file to the card.) You’ll pay more for the higher-speed cards, perhaps with no discernable benefit. You might be happier with three 1G cards having a 20X write speed than one or two 80X or faster high-speed cards with performance that you rarely require.

This is an important question because at the time I write this, dSLRs are available with resolutions from 3.4 megapixels to 16.7 megapixels (and beyond, if you include some exotic camera types). Even more interesting, not all digital SLRs of a particular resolution produce the same results. It’s entirely possible to get better photos from a 6 megapixel SLR with a sensor that has low noise and more accurate colors than with a similar 8 megapixel model with an inferior sensor (even when the differences in lens performance is discounted).

Different sensor paradigms can create wildly differing results, too. For example, the Foveon X3 sensor actually has only 3.4 megapixels worth of resolution, but when you consider that each photosite can sense red, green, or blue light without interpolation, the results can theoretically be as good as those produced with sensors having a higher resolution. (In fact, Foveon touts this particular sensor as a 10.2 megapixel imager, though absolute resolution is 2268 × 1512 pixels.)

Looking at resolution in general, you’ll want more megapixels for some types of photography. If you want to create prints larger than 8 × 10 inches, you’ll be happier with a camera having 6 to 10 megapixels of resolution or more. If you want to crop out small sections of an image, you may need a camera with 10 to 12 megapixels. On the other hand, if your primary application will be taking pictures for display on a Web page, or you need thumbnail-sized photos for ID cards or for a catalog with small illustrations, you may get along just fine with a 6 megapixel SLR camera. However, keep in mind that your needs may change, and you might
later regret choosing a camera with lower resolution.

Digital photography is definitely the best way to take your photos these days. While film cameras have their perks, the advantages of digital cameras are far better! Digital image recording simply opens up many new, valuable, and perhaps unanticipated opportunities.

For one thing, you’ve always got to make sure you have some extra film available with analog cameras. That is not only a hassle, it is also very expensive! With digital photography all you need is a memory card and you can fill it up with photos whenever you want and simply delete the ones you no longer need or have already uploaded from the memory card.

It’s not lile you have to completely re-learn how to take photos either! In fact, digital and film photography are far more alike than they are different. You still need to make use of lenses, flash, and proper composition. The difference is that digital cameras are actually easier to use and offer more opportunities than ever before.

You won’t find this written on the box, but every digital camera comes with a license to experiment, test, tweak to your heart’s content. Since every shot you, take costs virtually nothing, why hold you back? You can literally take dozens of shots with the hopes of landing a few keepers. This is something even the pros do, and that’s why it is such a great feature of having a digital camera. There is no better or faster way to learn! Instant feedback is one of digital photography’s most powerful advantages.

All this wonderful process of collecting photons and converting them into digital information requires a specific time span for this to happen, known in the photographic realm as exposure time. Film cameras have always sliced light into manageable slivers of time using mechanical devices called shutters, which block the film until you’re ready to take a picture, and then open to admit light for the period required for (we hope) an optimal exposure. This period is generally very brief, and is measured, for most pictures taken with a hand-held camera, in tiny fractions of a second.

Digital cameras have shutters, too. They can have either a mechanical shutter, which opens and closes to expose the sensor, or an electronic shutter, which simulates the same process. Many digital camera have both types of shutter, relying on a mechanical shutter for relatively longer exposures (usually 1/500th second to more than a second long), plus an electronic shutter for higher shutter speeds that are difficult to attain with mechanical shutters alone. (That’s why you’ll find digital cameras with shutter speeds as high as 1/16,000th second: they’re electronic.)

Mechanical shutters can work with any kind of sensor. One important thing to remember about a digital SLR’s mechanical shutter is that its briefest speed usually (but not always) determines the highest speed at which an electronic flash can synchronize. That is, if your dSLR synchs with electronic flash at no more than 1/125th second, that’s probably the highest mechanical shutter speed available. Some special flash systems can synchronize with electronic shutters at higher speeds.

The type of electronic shutter your camera has depends a great deal on the kind of sensor that is built into your camera. In terms of the kind of shutter they can use, sensors fall into one of two categories: interline and full frame. Both terms deal with how the sensor captures an image.

The interline sensor, developed originally for video cameras, isolates an entire image in one instant, and then gradually shifts it off the chip into the camera electronics for processing and conversion from an analog signal to digital format. While this process is underway, a new image can be accumulating on the chip. That’s because the interline sensor is, in effect, two sensors in one; while one sensor is exposed to light, the other is masked. The two sensors exchange places so that the previously masked sensor can then accept light while the sensor that was previously exposed is shielded so it can offload its image to the camera’s electronics. This capability waimportant for video cameras, which expose their sensors at a rate of 30 frames per second.

Because of this ability to isolate an image in a fraction of a second, interline sensors can function as an electronic, non-mechanical shutter. A full-frame sensor (not to be confused with full-frame sensor size), in contrast, is a single sensor that cannot isolate an image while it is still exposed to light. The sensor must be physically covered, uncovered to make the exposure, and then covered again while the image is transferred to the camera’s electronics. If the sensor is still exposed to light when an image is moved from the chip, the image will be smeared by illumination that strikes the photosites while the old image is being shifted. That calls for a mechanical shutter.

The ability of a digital sensor to capture information over the whole range from darkest areas to lightest is called its dynamic range. You take many kinds of photos in which an extended dynamic range would be useful. Perhaps you have people dressed in dark clothing standing against a snowy background, or a sunset picture with important detail in the foreground, or simply an image with important detail in the darkest shadow.

However, sensors have some difficulty capturing the full range of tones that may be present in an image. Tones that are too dark won’t provide enough photons to register in the sensor’s photosite “buckets,” producing clipped shadows, unless you specify a lower threshold or amplify the signal, increasing noise. Very light tones are likely to provide more photons than the bucket can hold, producing clipped highlights and overflowing to the adjacent photosites to generate blooming. Ideally, you want your sensor to be able to capture very subtle tonal gradations throughout the shadows, midtones, and highlight areas.

One way to do this is to give the photosites a larger surface area, which increases the volume of the bucket and allows collecting more photons. In fact, the jumbo photosites in larger dSLR sensors allow greater sensitivity (higher ISO settings), reduced noise, and an expanded dynamic range. For comparison purposes, the photosites on an 8MP non-SLR digital camera with a 2/3-inch CCD sensor measure 2.7 microns each. The larger sensors on a typical 6MP dSLR measure 7.8 microns—almost three times wider. You can see why a 6 megapixel dSLR might produce better images with lower noise than a non-SLR that has 2 million more pixels. The larger photosites tell it all.

Dynamic range can be described as a ratio that shows the relationship between the lightest image area a digital sensor can record and the darkest image area it can capture. The relationship is logarithmic, like the scales used to measure earthquakes, tornados, and other natural disasters. That is, dynamic range is expressed in density values, D, with a value of, say, 3.0 being ten times as large as 2.0. As with any ratio, there are two components used in the calculation, the lightest and darkest areas of the image that can be captured. In the photography world (which includes film; the importance of dynamic range is not limited to digital cameras), these components are commonly called Dmin (the minimum density, or brightest areas) and Dmax (the maximum density, or darkest areas).

Dynamic range comes into play when the analog signal is converted to digital form. As you probably know, digital images consist of the three color channels (red, green, and blue), each of which have, by the time we begin working with them in an image editor, tonal values ranging from 0 (black) to 255 (white). Those 256 values are each expressed as one 8-bit byte, and combining the three color channels (8 bits x 3) gives us the 24-bit, full-color image we’re most familiar with.

However, when your digital SLR converts the analog files to digital format to create its RAW image files, it can use more than 8 bits of information per color channel, usually 12 bits, 14 bits, or 16 bits. These extended range channels are usually converted down to 8 bits per channel when the RAW file is transferred to your image editor. The analog to digital converter circuitry itself has a dynamic range that provides an upper limit on the amount of information that can be converted. For example, with a theoretical 8-bit A/D converter, the darkest signal that can be represented is a value of 1, and the brightest has a value of 255. That ends up as the equivalent of a maximum possible dynamic range of 2.4, which is not especially impressive as things go.

On the other hand, a 10-bit A/D converter has 1,024 different tones per channel, and can produce a maximum dynamic range of 3.0; up the ante to 12 or 16 bits (and 4,094 or 65,535 tones) in the A/D conversion process, and the theoretical top dynamic ranges increases to values of D of 3.6 and 4.8, respectively. These figures assume that the analog to digital conversion circuitry operates perfectly and that there is no noise in the signal to contend with, so, as I said, those dynamic range figures are only theoretical. What you get is likely to be somewhat less. That’s why an 16-bit A/D converter, if your camera had one, would be more desirable than a 12-bit A/D converter.

Remember that the scale is logarithmic, so a dynamic range of 4.8 is many times larger than one of 3.6. The brightest tones aren’t particularly difficult to capture, as long as they aren’t too bright. The dark signals are much more difficult to grab because the weak signals can’t simply be boosted by amplifying them, as that increases both the signal as well as the background noise. All sensors produce some noise, and it varies by the amount of amplification used as well as other factors, such as the temperature of the sensor.(As sensors operate, they heat up, producing more noise.) So, the higher the dynamic range of a digital sensor, the more information you can capture from the darkest parts of a slide or negative. If you shoot low-light photos or images with wide variations in tonal values, make sure your dSLR has an A/D converter and dynamic range that can handle them. Unfortunately, specs alone won’t tell you; you’ll need to take some pictures under the conditions you’re concerned about and see if the camera is able to deliver.

All is not perfect in digital SLR land. There are a few select things that are difficult to do with a dSLR, and some problems that only digital single lens reflex owners have to contend with.

• Lack of superwide lenses. Unless you own a full-frame dSLR, your digital’s focal length multiplication factor must be figured in to calculate the true coverage of the lens. It’s nice to have a 200mm lens magically transformed into a 300mm telephoto, but it’s not so great when you discover that your 20mm wide angle is now an ordinary 30mm lens that barely qualifies for the wide-angle designation. To get true wide-angle coverage, you’ll need a prime (non-zoom) or zoom lens that starts at 17–18mm. Superwide lenses are more expensive and harder to find.  When I added a digital camera body to my film camera kit, my widest existing compatible lens was a favored 16mm semi-fish-eye lens that was the equivalent of a 24mm optic on my new digital SLR. Many digital camera owners have success using similar fish-eye lenses, and then “defishing” the finished pictures to correct for the distortion and produce a conventional wide-angle view. I ended up going a different route and buying a 12mm–24mm zoom (for $1,000—about the same as my dSLR body) to get an 18mm to 36mm (equivalent) viewpoint. If you do like fish-eye views, you can also purchase prime lenses in the 10mm range, but they are even more expensive. Anyone who likes the wideangle viewpoint can expect to buy extra lenses. Of course, few non-dSLRs, other than one new model from Nikon with a 24–85mm zoom, have zooms that go wider than 28mm, either.

• No LCD preview or composing. The LCD on a dSLR can be used only for reviewing photos or working with menus. Not a problem with through-the-lens viewing, you think? Try taking a few pictures using an infra-red filter that blocks visible light. Your SLR view is totally black, yet some non-dSLR camera’s LCDs show a dim, serviceable image under such conditions. Moreover, some point-and-shoots have swiveling LCDs or swiveling bodies, so you can hold the camera over your head or down below your waist and still view the image. Want to take a self-portrait? Some non-dSLRs with swiveling lenses automatically invert the image on the LCD so you can point the camera at yourself and still preview the image you’re about to take.

• Dirt and dust. Make no mistake, if you change lenses at all your digital SLR will eventually accumulate dust specks on the sensor that you’ll have to remove. I had my dSLR all of two weeks and had changed the lenses maybe four times when I noticed a recurring speck on all my photos. This dust is generally not difficult to remove and may not even show up except in photos taken with a small f-stop, but the mere threat is enough to drive you crazy. I find myself cleaning the sensor every time I go out for an important shoot, fearful of coming home with 500 photos all marred by a dust speck. Oddly, this drawback of the digital SLR is rarely discussed by vendors, yet it’s the most common problem a dSLR owner is likely to encounter. Look for more vendors to include widgets like Olympus’s Supersonic Wave Filter to shake the dust off before it causes a problem.

• Size, weight, and general clunkiness. Your dSLR is going to be much larger and weigh more than whatever point-and-shoot digital camera you may be used to. If you’re switching over from a film SLR, you may not notice the difference. Still, a dSLR will generally be clunkier and noisier than a point-and-shoot digital, even with the fake noise turned off.

One of the big myths of digital photography is that film/camera behemoth Eastman Kodak Company is slowly being pushed out of the film business by digital technology. In truth, if you look at history, Kodak has been a driving force behind the scenes of digital imaging for decades, dating way before Steve Sasson’s first digital camera.

Kodak scientists invented the modern scanner back in the mid-20th century, coined the term megapixel sensor for the first CCD capable of capturing more than a million pixels of information, and created the first Photo CD for digital pictures at a time when very few computer owners had a CD-ROM drive with which to view them. By the early 1990s, professional photographers had 55 pound, $30,000, 1.3 megapixel cameras (from Kodak, based on a Nikon F3 body), and amateurs could pick up an Apple QuickTake 100, which offered 640 × 480 pixel resolution, and was actually designed by Kodak and built by Chinon Industries (which is now a Kodak subsidiary).

Kodak later offered the DC40 and DC50, built from refined versions of the original design. Although Kodak milked its film and film camera cash cows for well over 100 years, the company has seen the coming digital imaging changes. It has led the charge with products that, while often not the best in their class, have always been appealing to amateurs and photo enthusiasts.

You don’t need to know anything about internal combustion to operate an automobile, and you really don’t need to understand digital technology to use a point-and-shoot digital camera, either. Both devices are so automated these days that there’s not a lot for the driver/shooter to do other than point the machinery in the right direction and press the gas pedal or shutter release.

Even if you decide to use manual controls on a non-dSLR, the only thing you must understand is that this button makes the picture lighter or darker, that one helps freeze action, and this other button changes the way the camera focuses.

It’s a different ballgame with a digital SLR, and most of us wouldn’t have it any other way. Unlike point-and-shoot digital photography, where it’s almost impossible to adjust depth-offield, and usable ISO ratings range from ISO 100 to ISO 100, the technology built into a dSLR does allow you to make a difference creatively and technically, if you know what you’re doing.

For the average serious photographer, that’s what taking pictures is all about. With a digital SLR, it’s easy to use depth-of-field to manipulate your images, but you need to understand how digital cameras work with lenses and their apertures. The “graininess” of your pictures is under your control, too, but depends heavily on things like the size of the sensor, the sensitivity rating you’re using, and what kind of noise reduction technology is built into your camera.

Would you like to take a picture in which a runner is frozen in time, but a streaky blur trails behind him like The Flash in comic books? You’d better understand the difference between front-sync and rear-sync shutter settings.

Interested in using a super-long telephoto lens without a tripod? Step up and learn about image stabilizers. If you’re who I think you are, you don’t see understanding digital SLR technology as a daunting task, but as an interesting challenge. By the time someone is ready to step up to a dSLR, he or she is looking forward to taking greater control over every aspect of the picture-taking process. Similarly, a photo enthusiast who already has SLR experience with film cameras finds the challenge one that’s easy to undertake.

That’s especially true because the technologies used for film and digital SLRs have converged dramatically over the years. Solid-state technology began to worm itself into conventional cameras more than 20 years ago, in the form of electronic metering, electronic shutters, programmed exposure modes, and automatic focus. The first digital SLRs were created by grafting a digital sensor into the back of a film SLR and then tacking on some electronics to process and store the images.

Even today, when digital SLRs are using fewer off-the-shelf film camera components, there are many models so similar to the film camera counterparts from the same vendor that if you were handed one at random, you’d probably have to check it out for a few seconds to decide if it were the film or electronic version.

The most comforting thing about digital SLR technology is that, for the most part, these cameras were designed by engineers who understand photography. Many of the point-and-shoot digital cameras I have used appear to have been designed by a techie who was creating cell phones or PDAs last week, and then moved over to digital cameras this week. They operate like computers rather than cameras, have features that nobody in their right mind actually needs, and often are completely unusable for the kinds of photography they are intended for.

For example, I recently tested a pocket-sized digicam that had no optical viewfinder at all. It was necessary to frame every picture using the back-panel LCD, which, unfortunately, completely washed out when used outdoors at any time of the day when the sun was out. Another camera had a sensational burst mode that could snap off six frames in about 1.5 seconds. Casual sports photographers would love that, except this particular model provided no way to set the shutter speed high enough to stop action, nor was there even a Sports shooting mode.

Ack! In contrast, digital SLRs are designed by people who understand your needs. Most of them have been designing film cameras for many years, and know from the feedback they receive what photographers want. So, learning dSLR technology will be rewarding for you because you’ll come to understand exactly how to use features that have been designed to help you be a better and more creative photographer.

Arguably the most important weapon in a photographers’ arsenal, lenses are also one of the most variable. From the widest 10mm fish-eye to the longest 800mm telephoto, optics are available in every conceivable size, weight and focal length. Due to the smaller sensors used in many of today’s digital SLRs, however, focal lengths vary depending on the model in question. Whether you’re a landscaper looking to capture dramatic sunsets or an architectural fanatic looking to isolate fine details, there’s a multitude of options that fall into four categories. Here’s the lowdown.

Standard

On full-frame digital SLRs standard lenses fall between 40mm and 55mm, though 50mm is the accepted norm. You’ll need a 35mm lens to get the same field-ofview on digital SLRs with the smaller APS-sized sensor. Closest to the field-of-view of the human eye, standard lenses offer an undistorted perspective and are often used for flattering portraits. Just for the record, the true field-of-view of the human eye is 43mm!

Wide-angle

With shorter focal lengths and wider angles-of-view than standard lenses, wide-angle lenses are employed by landscape and reportage specialists. Remember you’ll need a shorter focal length on many digital SLRs than a 35mm or full-frame digital model.

This need for shorter focal lengths on many digital SLRs has produced a raft of new models. A 17-35mm model, such as the one shown below, gives a field-of-view equivalent to 25-52mm on a full-frame SLR.

Macro

If you’ve ever wondered how photographers fill the frame with small subjects such as petals and insects, the answer is the humble macro lens. Allowing for 1:1 (lifesize) reproduction and focusing from as close as 2in, true macro lenses are specifi cally constructed for close-up photography. They are commonly available in focal lengths between 50mm and 180mm.

Telephoto

Any lens that weighs in with a focal length above 50mm is said to be a telephoto lens. Short telephotos (between 70mm and 120mm) are ideal for portraiture, while longer focal lengths (between 135mm and 300mm and above) are perfect for sports and wildlife. Remember, the magnification of a lens on most digital SLRs is increased by around 1.5x, so a 200mm lens is equivalent to a 300mm on a full-frame camera.

Because technology changes so rapidly, it’s unlikely that the camera you buy today will be your last. On the other hand, even the least expensive dSLR is a major investment for most of us, particularly when you factor in the cost of the lenses and accessories you’ll purchase. You want to make the right choice the first time.

Indeed, for as long as I’ve been involved with photography, deciding which SLR family to marry into has been an agonizing decision. No one wants to be locked into a product line that won’t do the job, won’t keep pace with technology, or, worse, will go belly-up, leaving owners of a particular vendor’s equipment orphaned, in a sense. A generation ago, film SLR buyers were committing to cameras produced by companies called Topcon, Miranda, or Yashica. These were fine cameras in their time, but none of them survived to the digital age.

Even among modern digital camera vendors, you have important SLR manufacturers that were late to the party (Konica Minolta, for example) and others with now-you-see-it/now-you-don’t products, such as the Contax N Digital, a 6MP digital SLR announced in July, 2000, but later withdrawn from the US market. You can be certain that Konica Minolta is in the digital SLR fray for the long term, but can you be that confident about all the other players in the game?

Digital SLR decision makers often fall into one of four categories:

■ Serious photographers, photo enthusiasts, and professionals who already own lenses and accessories belonging to a particular system, and who need to preserve their investments by choosing, if possible, a dSLR that is compatible with as much of their existing equipment as possible. Professionals who buy equipment like carpenters buy routers. They want something that will do the job and is rugged enough to work reliably despite heavy use and mistreatment. They don’t necessarily care about cost if the gear will do what’s needed, because their organizations or clients are ultimately footing the bill. Compatibility may be a good idea if an organization’s shooters share a pool of specialized equipment, but a pro choosing to
switch to a whole new system probably won’t care much if the old stuff has to fall by the wayside.
■ Amateurs and enthusiast photographers with too much money who feel that the only way they will be able to take decent (or better) pictures is to own the very latest consumerlevel equipment. These are the people who bought the Canon Digital Rebel when it first came out, but sold everything and switched to the Nikon D70 a few months later to gain some additional capabilities. Six months later they were posting questions in newsgroups about whether they should sell everything again and buy a Canon EOS 20D or maybe a Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D.
■ Those who are buying their first dSLR, and either don’t own an existing film SLR, or don’t particularly care about using their old equipment with a new camera. Often, these buyers don’t plan on junking everything and buying into a new system anytime soon, so they are likely to examine all the options and choose the best dSLR system based on as many factors as possible. Indeed, their caution may be why they’ve waited this long to purchase a digital SLR in the first place.

Once you decide which category you fall into, you need to make a list of your requirements. What kind of pictures will you be taking? How often will you be able to upgrade? What capabilities do you need? Ask yourself the following questions to help pin down your real needs.