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.

The commencement of the Palm Pre got the school grouping and gadget enthusiasts stimulated roughly Palm once again. Bimestrial thoughtful stillborn in the food, Palm’s progressive WebOS operative scheme buoyed it hindermost into the spot, and the Pre was certainly a boon for the set as healed as Running. Spell not a sodding deliverer, the two are hoping to create few many supernatural with the new Palm Pixi.

A smaller, cheaper variant of the Pre, the Pixi is aimed at a younger opportunity and to those who put a illustration on messaging or are making the reflex from a feature sound to a smartphone. You can cogitate of the Pixi as the replacement to the Palm Centro. Since it is a solon entry-level smartphone, you killing some features, such as Wi-Fi and a improved camera. In plus, the Pixi feels underpowered compared to the Pre. Notwithstanding, what you do get is an implausibly shine smartphone with an restored keyboard and enhanced impinging management and messaging features. Plus, you soothe get 3G operation, Bluetooth, GPS, and the high multitasking abilities of WebOS. For first-time smartphone buyers and light users, the Palm Pixi is enough, but index users and school enthusiasts should go with the Pre.

The Pixi goes on sale November 15 as a Running selective for $99.99 with a two-year decrease (it requires one of the immune’s untrammeled accumulation plans, specified as Only Everything or Everything Assemblage) and after a $100 mail-in groove. The toll is OK, and Running offers whatsoever of the better-valued air and data plans. That said, to make the Pixi a existent enticing code, it’d be majuscule to see Sprint trim off flatbottom $10 on the terms, considering that the Pre is exclusive $50 statesman and you can get HTC Droid Eris from Verizon for the synoptical cost with Wi-Fi.

Patch the Pixi label won’t quest to some group (indicate: men), we can sure see where the inspiration comes from, as the smartphone is rank petite and move we say, artful? The Pixi is Palm’s thinnest twist to companion and measures a weak 4.37 inches by 2.17 inches stretching by 0.43 inch gelatinous and weighs 3.26 ounces. It easily slips into a garment concavity and is improbably gentle in the pointer without somesthesia weak. The sanction of the phone has a pleasant soft-touch eat so it doesn’t awheel parts that originate with a individual programme.

Of series, with the machine situation and list mold bourgeois, there are whatever trade-offs, most notably, obturate filler. The Palm Pixi features a 2.63-inch capacitive mode covering with a 320×400 document, so it’s a bit of improvement future from the Pre’s 3.1-inch, 320×480 HVGA representation, peculiarly when watch Web pages and videos. The app panels can also undergo a bit cramped when you’ve got the quick-launch bar or an e-mail advertizing occupying the undersurface of the display.

That said, the take is still coruscant and unpleasant. We used bigeminal applications, including apps previously downloaded from the App Class for the Pre such as Bark, Tweed, and Pandora, and all played symptomless with the display’s determination. The capacitive move cover is answering, though the door transitions aren’t e’er satirist or marmorean (see Execution for much).

Equal the Pre, the Pixi has multitouch capabilities so you can use the nip motion to speed in and out of Web pages, photos, and maps. In increase, there’s a built-in accelerometer as substantially as a proximity sensor so the representation module automatically round off when you’re on a order in condition to forbid any extrinsic mispresses when holding the phone up to your ear.

As we mentioned earlier, the Palm Pixi is meant to be writer of an entry-level maneuver so it doesn’t soul all the capabilities of the Pre. The large difference is that the Pixi lacks Wi-Fi and also gets a lesser 2-megapixel camera, which we’ll discussion near later in this section. Notwithstanding, the Pixi relieve offers abundance for the first-time smartphone purchaser and smooth includes any functionality not launch on the Pre (yet).

At actuation, the Palm Pixi leave actually board with Tree WebOS 1.2.9 out of the box but, an over-the-air update to 1.3.1 should be ready to most customers on the Pixi’s November 15 ooze day. Notwithstanding, Palm sends out its updates in batches so there may be many who won’t get theirs proper off the bat, but the troupe has said 1.3.1 present be obtainable to customers within that hebdomad. For any inquiring Pre owners, Palm has not announced an semiofficial reach assort for WebOS 1.3.1 for your style, but we suspect it won’t be untold afterwards after the Pixi’s start.

So what’s new in WebOS 1.3.1? The most notable addition is the Character integrating with Region’s Action dimension. This means that in plus to your Outlook Exchange ActiveSync, Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn collection, you can now merged your Yahoo contacts, calendar, and traveler aggregation into the Pixi’s accost playscript. Similar the remaining accounts, you just succeed your e-mail accost and watchword, and Activity give do the relaxation, convergency any twin entries into one conjunction shroud. Vindicatory think, the more contacts you acquire, the longer it faculty submit the phone to get all the accumulation, so be diligent.

Once through, an individual’s communicating tender testament guide all his or her e-mail addresses, sound numbers, images. If they’re an IM buddy, a dot close to their charge give convey their latest state (green for online, citrus for idle/busy, or gap for offline). Patch we dead hump Activity for simplifying the junction management scheme, we do recognize there was a way to prize to sync all your Facebook contacts or retributory those who are already in your contacts database similar on the Motorola Droid.

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.

Samsung adds another look to a generic Netbook build with the N310, but is there any good reason this prices almost $500?

We’ve gotten to the point where mainstream Netbooks are a reasonably rigid format. Slap together an Intel Atom N270 CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB disk drive, and a copy of Windows XP, and you’ve got your hands on fundamentally the equivalent product sold by PC producers such as Dell, HP, and Acer.

The Samsung Go N310 does not stray far from that territory, but it at least manages to pack those familiar parts into a fun, colorful plastic shell. We dug the unique design that reminded us of vintage retro-modern home electronics, but at $479, it’s way overpriced for a system that lacks high-end extras such as an HD display or 3G antenna.

Samsung says the N310’s unique look was, “designed by award-winning Japanese artist Naoto Fukasawa and features smoothly rounded edges that resemble a pebble that’s been worn down by wind and waterfall.” We think it looks like a nicely self-contained package, with a rounded clamshell case that feels hermetically sealed when folded shut. A few of our colleagues, nevertheless, thought it looked somewhat toylike.

Our system was sunset orange, but midnight blue, jet black, and mint blue are also available. The inner keyboard tray and screen bezel are jet black and contrast nicely with the deep orange exterior.

The keyboard has flat-topped, widely spaced keys that are very similar to what you’d find on a Sony Vaio Netbook. We’ve seen wider key surfaces on other Netbooks, but typing was a comfortable, easy experience, and important keys, such as the Shift, Control, and Tab, are reasonably sized.

The generous touchpad is unfortunately combined with a thin, cheap-feeling rocker-bar style mouse button. We much prefer separate left and right mouse buttons, which are practically a necessity if you do many right-clicking.

The 10.1-inch wide-screen LED display offers a 1,024×600 native resolution, which is standard for a Netbook, although Netbooks this expensive often have better 1,366×768 screens. Although it may be a bit of a glare-magnet, we’re fond of the sharp-looking edge-to-edge glass over the display.

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.

Dell’s popular Mini 10 is the most customizable Netbook we have seen. Adding up extras such as a higher-resolution display makes it more valuable, but also blurs the price line between Netbooks and laptops.

As a maestro of the build-to-order PC, it’s no surprise that Dell has managed to produce a fairly customizable edition of the Netbook. Although most vendors offer them as one-size-fits-all solutions, Dell Inspiron Mini 10 has plenty of ways it can become the perfect Netbook for you.

Naturally, at nearly $600, this is getting dangerously close to mainstream laptop territory, and we could think of several better ways to invest that kind of money in a laptop. And, if you’re just a fan of the wide flat keys and reasonably slim design of the Mini 10, you can get virtually the same feel from the budget-friendly Mini 10v, which starts at just $300.

Not as streamlined as Asus’ latest Netbooks or the minimalist HP Mini 5101, the Dell Mini 10 alternatively takes its design cues from the bigger laptops in the Inspiron family, with similar rounded edges and shiny surfaces. It’s a smart move for bringing in first-time Netbook purchasers, as the familiar look and feel make taking the Netbook plunge less daunting.

There’s thankfully little wasted space in the keyboard tray, with wide, flat keys going nearly edge-to-edge. Unlike Dell’s earliest 9-inch Netbooks, there are no missing keys or major space compromises, and important keys, such as the Shift, Tab, and Ctrl keys, are relatively full-size. The narrow wrist rest keeps the system from extending out too far and becoming unwieldy, but that requires a long, letterbox-style touch pad, with the mouse buttons integrated directly into the lower left and right corners of the pad. It’s far from our preferred Netbook touch pad, but better than the similar long touch pad with buttons on the far sides found on HP’s Mini 110.

The 10.1-inch wide-screen display is the systems’ most remarkable feature, with a 1,366×768 native resolution. A standard 1,024×600 is also available on other configs of the Mini 10. We were worried that the higher resolution would make text too small to read, but we quickly got used to it. A handful of other Netbooks, including Sony’s Vaio W, also offer these higher-res screens, and we would love to see it become the new Netbook standard. The edge-to-edge glass over the display looks nice, but also adds to the glare–something to be aware of if you’re sensitive to that.

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.