I have had a variety of SLR's over th epast 35 years - all Canon. All excellent.
Having moved into the digital age, and not wanting to cart around a huge camera bag and lenses, I opted for a smaller camera. Did a lot of research and bought this one about 3 months ago:
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/s3is.html
12 times zoom [36-432mm equivalent], light weight, outstanding image quality [virtually indistinguishable from DSLR unless you really blow up th epixels], camcorder quality AVI video [I use a 4Gb card and can get half an hour of DVD quality video on each], advanced image stabilisation system, almost fool proof in operation.
Do I like it? You bet, overall the best camera I have owned.
Would I go back to a DSLR? Can't see the point unless I was a professional and wanted to blow up pics into posters. Look at the images on the above post and consider if you would be happy producing them.
I recently bought the 75mm-300mm zoom lens for my Canon EOS 350D.
Unfortunately I was quite disappointed with the performance of this lens.
I returned the lens to the shop, Jessops, who replaced the lens without any argument (one reason I always buy from them) but the replacement lens was just as bad.
I gave the lens an exhaustive test and found that up to 200mm it was quite reasonable but from 200-300mm it deterirated quite badly.
However I have kept the lens because there doesn't seem to be a really good quality lens at anywhere near the price I paid for it.
I now simply use it up to 200mm, and enhance the images if necessary in Helicon Filter.
So if you are going to buy the lens for 300mm use, don't bother, but if you want a reasonably priced lens up to 200mm this one may suit you as long as you are aware of its limitations.
Canon is widely know to be at the top of the digital market. The produce both the components and firware, which is unique. Nikon got into digital later but is quickly gaining on canon.
It's Canon all the way in the digital world. Nikon is great, but if we're talking digital, Canon's the one to beat.
I agree with a previous poster who says that as you get up there, your lenses are the determining factor. My 4 main lenses cost more each than the body itself (I'm using a Canon EOS 5D) and Canon L lenses. I have not been disappointed.
One problem is that you wanted to do a lot of low life, sports/action photography yet stay under $800 CDN... that's hard to do since low light performance is the achilles' heel for most lenses/bodies.
The Fujifilm FinePix S5 Pro Digital SLR Camera is a good value digital SLR camera with an impressive feature set. It is reputed to take excellent quality pictures and has a very good skin-toned reproduction which makes it ideal for portraits and high-contrast compositions. It utilizes a SuperCCD SR Pro imaging chip that claims to offer improvements in noise, dynamic range, colour, and tonality over its predecessor, the S3 Pro. To get a more detailed understanding about the product, I suggest that you visit this site (http://www.smartratings.com/review/photo...al_cameras/1028) where a compilation of expert reviews about the camera are aggregated. Hope this helps.
I trained on the Nickon D100, I love it. Then the newer ones came out.. I think the D70 it was called. I used it for a wedding and it worked well. In my photo shoots, i have always used Nikon.
