I have spent the last half an hour drooling over digital camera, some of them SLR, some not. I have been looking very carefully at SLRs and trying to figure out what makes them special in digital cameras… from what I can tell… not much. The only thing different between a really good “point and shoot” digital camera and a digital SLR is that there is no special “high end” classification of digital cameras that will give you the level of control that an SLR will. From my research I have determined that Fujifilm no longer produces a consumer grade dSLR camera, they seem to be just for uber professionals. This change would be because of the great flexibility that is available in a high end digital camera with a fixed lens. SLR cameras have 2 major flaws in general, 1. they have moving parts, and 2. they expose too much of themselves. The moving mirror allows for an additional point of failure that doesn’t exist in a non-SLR camera. A P&S camera will likely recover from a minor fall, but unless the mirror is locked, there could be problems on an SLR. The true reason in the past for using an SLR is to allow for using only one lens for viewfinder and for exposure. In high end digital cameras, the CCD image is sent directly to the LCD and/or to a digital viewfinder, removing the use of multiple lenses, even though they are not considered SLR, since the lens is stationary. SLR cameras also seem to expose too much of themselves to the world. The interchanging of lenses is great on an SLR if you really want to spend a few thousand dollars on all of those special lenses. The truth of lenses on digital cameras is very simple… the only things that matter now are the range of the focal length and how well it can zoom. A very good digital camera will have a very versatile lens built in that will function as a wide lens, a zoom lens and a telephoto lens, all in one with no need to change. Also, if the lens is 55mm (or some other standard) with accepting threads, filters and special additional lenses can be added. On the topic of the camera being over-exposed… if you have to unscrew something and then rescrew something, chances are… dust will be there.
Anyway, before I started down the Anti-SLR path, I was expressing my recent droolings…I have been drooling over my camera’s big brother…. the Fujifilm FinePix S100FS. It is not SLR, but it is fucking awesome. It does image stabilization, has 14x zoom lens capability and also is 11.1MP, so I can do huge prints with it. My other drool-ling was the Nikon D80. It is a true dSLR camera, at 10.2 MP. I love it because its a Nikon and because it has an interchangeable lens kit. If I were to pick between the cameras for use right now I would go with the Fuji, because I don’t need the flexibility of changing lenses, but the Nikon D80 is definitely a camera to grow with. I guess at the moment I will stick with my FujiFilm S5200 and be quite happy, since… well… it has a 10x optical zoom, full manual controls and it just totally kicks ass (only 5.1MP, but I’m not printing any billboards this semester).
Here is the S100FS: