Buying a dSLR: Tip #1
Tip #1: A bigger, better, more expensive camera doesn’t mean you’ll immediately get better pictures; you will actually have to “work” harder to get them!
SLR revolves around the strength in bigger, higher quality lens. dSLR takes this a step further to enhance the result with a large, high-sensitivity and low-noise sensor, and powerful image processing.
A compact camera takes excellent photos with very little effort. When the average amateur photographer moves to a dSLR, they notice a sudden drop in successful photos, caused by the more sensitive optical components. With dSLR, you can get out of focus images much easier, you’ll have a shorter depth of field (objects at a distance from the point of focus are blurred more than with a compact camera), you’ll miss lots of shots because of the extra settings you need to adjust.
In other words, the strength points of the dSLR are far less forgiving with an amateur photographer than a compact camera. The tiniest mistake will show up badly.
If you plan to take photos in “Auto” mode with a dSLR, then this is going to be a very bad investment for you. If you just want to get great photos easily, stick with a compact camera. Its smaller lens and sensor is far more tolerant to mistakes, misfocus, bad light. A compact camera may even accomodate a long zoom.
And don’t fall for the marketing messages claiming a dSLR to be as easy as point-and-shoot. They’re not. By design, they are specialized tools targeting experienced photographers, giving the power of taking an artistic shot back to the human instead of making it a no-brainer click with the help of computer chips.
