Well, all of those options are going to give you great results, it's just which is right for you.

Happy hunting!

I do not know about the Leica, but one thing I know for sure is that even if it's bigger and less convenient to carry around, I've allways prefered to use SLRs. Over the years, I'v owned many Nikon SLRs (FM2, FE2, F4s, F5, F2A) and now I sold all that gear which was loosing value very fast when the better digital cameras came out. The only SLR I kept was the FM2 with my very loud MD-12 motor drive (When i use it, everybody's looking at me as if I would be an alien emerging from the eighties!).

My girlfriend recently bought a D80 and I use it from time to time with my different lenses (amongst which I have an awesome 135mm f2 DC). I think It's very good for the money (1000$ CAD. The good thing about digital cameras is the fact that it does not cost a single cent to shoot. The bad thing about it is the bad light dynamics (blasting whites) in comparison to film. My girlfriend choose a Nikon D80 because you can use almost all Nikon lenses on it, I am now thinking about the D300 for myself but I think I will still wait for the larger DCC (35mm as in the 5D or D3) to come out in cheaper models to make the move. The only reason why I would choose a Nikon is because I already have a couple of lenses.

My friend recently bought a D5. In many ways, it's awesome, if I were you, I'd go all the way with the D5.

Cheers!

I can only speak for my own experience having both a Pentax DSLR and recently bought a Leica equipped Panasonic Lumix TZ3. The Pentax DSLR IST DS2 is light years better than the TZ3 in any lighting conditions - the TZ3 can't cope with huge variations in lighting in single frame, it can't cope with low light, it doesn't offer anything like the flexibility of a DSLR.

On the other hand it is a superb slip in the pocket camera and I now use it far more than the SLR in all sorts of situations, travel, parties etc because it is so compact, fast and simple to use - and most of the time it is good enough.

If it were me though, I'd buy an SLR system that will use your existing lenses and only ever buy a digital compact if I already had a competent DSLR - that way it's my choice when I choose to accept the lower quality results.

Jonathan

Yes, i have a feeling that somehow I will end up with both a (D)SLR and a compact.

I keep trying to pinch Mrs D's Nikon P5000, but she seems to keep it under lock and key and uses it virtually every day. Nice pics as well, ....but!

Cheers

Don

quote:

Originally posted by Mike1380:
...optically the design of the SLR lens is bound to have less compromise than something that was design to fit into a compact.

Not true. The need to leave clearance for a mirror is a (sometimes serious) compromise for SLR designs particularly for wide angles. Also it is easier to correct for a lens which has to cover the smaller sensor of a typical compact.

FWIW I would prefer the compact unless I could get somebody else to carry it, in which case I would not hesitate in going for the SLR.

Absolutely... where the requirement is specifically for a lens of short focal length.

In fact the majority of SLR lenses below 35mm focal length have to be designed in such a way that their optical centre lies outside the physical construction of the lens... between the rear element & the "film plane"

It is because of this that the Leica rangefinders are still so good at short focal length - their lack of need for a mirror-box allows the lens to be physically closer and this avoids the need to go to such lengths. The resulting simplicity of the M-Series wide-angle lens design is one of the keys to its' phenomenal performance.

Unfortunately this is less of a valid comparison as far too many compacts have focal lengths equivalent to 38mm or above.... thus rendering little advantage over the retro-focal designs of SLR lenses wider than 35mm.. against which most of these compacts are not competing. Those which do offer 28mm equivalency almost always do so as part of a zoom, usually a 3 or 4x zoom ratio... this has compromises involved in engineering the variable focal length, which tend to outweigh the abilities the lens has at its' widest focal length.

Sure, that's a generalisation.... give me a Nikon 28ti, or a Ricoh GR1 and I'll be a happy boy. In fact I still own a Nikon AF600 - an ultra compact 35mm camera sporting a 28mm f/3.5 of astonihing performance - all the better given the fiver it cost me on e-Bay.


Also worthy of note is that compacts employing zooms usually force their hand on image quality in terms of vignetting & fall-off in sharpness towards the edges & corners.

Using an SLR which employs a much larger lens diameter can avoid having to rely on the entire breath of the optical pathway of the lens to render an image, and allows the lens manufacturer to optimise the central optical pathway which is more likely to give best performance with the aperature wide-open.. rather than with narrow-barrel designs where best performance occurs when the aperature is stopped down 3 or 4 stops.



Mike

I've briefly glanced at this thread and don't really want to get too involved, but I just want to make a couple of points to make you think outside the box.

Firstly, you can speculate all you like and read as many reviews as you can, but lens design and lens quality cannot be judged by theory or which manufacturer has made it. They all have there own merits and flaws, and it depends on which camera they're attached to.

I have a Nikkor 14mmf2.8. Fitted to the D2x, at the edges of the image, the definition is terrible and there's a lot of chromatic aberration. Bear in mind that the D2x is cropping 50% of the image circle produced by the lens.

Place the same lens on the D3, (which now shows the full image circle) the edge definition is better and there is little chromatic aberration. One would have thought that after seeing the results of this lens on a D2x, it would become unuseable with a full frame sensor, but not so.

The 14-24mmf2.8 Nikkor zoom is far superior in edge resolution, chromatic aberration and distortion than the fixed 14mmf2.8. Goes against the theoretical rules.

Just a small example of what happens in the whole photography market.

quote:

Originally posted by count.d:



I have a Nikkor 14mmf2.8. Fitted to the D2x, at the edges of the image, the definition is terrible and there's a lot of chromatic aberration. Bear in mind that the D2x is cropping 50% of the image circle produced by the lens.

Place the same lens on the D3, (which now shows the full image circle) the edge definition is better and there is little chromatic aberration. One would have thought that after seeing the results of this lens on a D2x, it would become unuseable with a full frame sensor, but not so.

There is a digital processing in the D3 and D300 which actually make corrections for lens flaw. It has been reported in some reviews. So your observation is not surprising. These 2 cameras actually improve the image captured by optic flaws. Try google, I cannot remember if it was dpreview of another site which reported this.