I bought a kodak last year and my research indicated: -spend your money on megapixels if your style is casual, you'll being taking pics on-the-fly and for all around flexibility -spend your money on zoom if you are a more meticulous type likely to spend time setting up your shots -If you have lots of money, buy high pegapixels and broad zoom options I bought megapixels and couldn't be happier. I can crop and zoom and end up with a striking photograph selected out of an ordinary snapshot. Definately suits my style.

A heartwarming story...thanks for the link. It always amazes me that people can get in - with their kids! -a barely seaworthy vessel and set out on a journey to who-know-where. Courage and bravery come to mind---but also the chance of sacrificing your family. It takes a wild thought process to come to the decision to risk it all and take off. The whole experience for the students must have been mind blowing. It changes one's outlook on life and what's really important. On Saturday, I hope to spend most of the day outside, connecting with nature in the garden. If I get it pruned, weeded, and swept, I may reward myself in the next couple of weeks by buying a cool plant or two at the nursery. Sunday, I'm going to help a teacher build a set for the kindergarten St. Pat's Day play. That should take but a couple of hours, so maybe I'll take the kids to the beach! It's lovely weather here. I decided I'm not freaking out about the chores this weekend...can you tell it's the end of the end of the quarter for me? One more paper due and I'm off for a week on the COLD east coast! *********What's important to YOU this weekend?********** Check in before you check out for the weekend!

"I'm so impressed. This has helped me a great deal. I would love to just verify one thing. You said Image Stabilization is possible thru the use of a special lens?" Yes, some lenses have it, some don't. Some don't matter as much. My 10-22 does not have it, and it gets photos as if it did. Each lens is different. I only have one lens with IS, the 28-135, but what it basically means is you can get clear shots at lower shutter speeds (NO BLURRING DUE CAMERA SHAKE BUT BLURRING IF YOU DIDN'T NAIL THE FOCUS RIGHT), down to like 1/10 sec that you could not without it. 1/60 a sec is about the limit handheld w/o IS, but some people are steady enough and/or use a monopod and can get 1/30 and still sharp. Monopod you can get down to around 1/10. Any lower than that and you need a tripod. When you look at the lineup of Canon lenses, it says IS on the description. That means it has image stabilization. With Nikon, I think it is VR. Means the same thing. IS is almost a must if you have a long zoom lens and want to shoot say birds closeup without a tripod. JoanMn made some good comments. "Shooting pics in RAW you need to make color corrections?" Not always. It just gives you a second chance to change exposure and white balance, also does color corrections if needed. Some are not needed. "So it's not a perfect picture just by pointing and shooting with RAW?" Not usually with me, but when you have more experience and know what settings and approach to use, you up your chances of getting a perfect photo out of the camera. That is the goal. RAW just gives you a better second chance. Post processing jpgs gives you a second chance with color, sharpening, contrast, other things but will not get back lost detail. It gives an otherwise blah photo more "punch". RAW can do that but sometimes the lost detail just isn't there. "You still have to make corrections?" Most people do on photos they display on the web, those who want perfection, here I think most are posting out out of the camera shots. At small sizes, it's not such a big deal but can be. If you want really nice prints, you should tweak most of your photos but you do not have to. At the minimum, you should straighten and sharpen them. Photos out of dslr cameras tend to be soft. A little sharpening makes them look better. I sharpened my white dogwood blossoms. You can tell the difference. I did not have to shoot RAW to do that, but did have to shoot RAW if the white balance was off (I liked it the way it was) and I lost some of the detail in the bright areas. With RAW, I got most of it back. You can't do that shooting in JPG. There may be other things about it I'm not up on yet that make it more advantageous. It can be a pain because it involves some more steps in post processing, but it is worth it to me on my nicer photos. Others I don't bother, like one you want to post on ebay, proofs, quick and dirty, etc. "The photo's are beautiful and the hands on monitor pic is great. If I only understood it. But, I'm learning a bit as I go." After I saw it explained about 10 times and saw examples people posted on another forum, can't name it here, rules, I began to see the advantages. Once I started doing it, it started making some sense and I'm comfortable with it now, but haven't reached expert status. I was looooooost at first. But my experience with my little point and shoot which had some advanced features helped a lot and in no time I was shooting in aperture priority, shutter priority, and doing some night fireworks shots full manual. If you do decide to go dslr, you can get some basic settings from people, shoot in program mode just like a point and shoot and grow into the advanced features at your own pace. Some of this is advanced, and you cannot possibly be expected to understand it. You will understand it more as you see it discussed and think it over. I inundated you with too much information, but if you are thinking about a Rebel XT, those are the possibilities. One very important thing I failed to mention is that with the low noise at high ISO on the XT and mine, you can take really, really nice photos indoors without a flash. Nikon isn't quite as good that way but excels in other ways. Sometimes you need a flash anyway because the available light is just not sufficient. You get to know by practicing what you can and cannot do. The big thing with some people are concert photos. If you get the XT or a Nikon, you are not allowed to use flash in some venues, sometimes no camera at all. If you are not allowed to use a flash but are allowed to take photos, you bump up the ISO way high (advantage of Canon, silky photos at high ISO, no noise until 1600 and 3200, amazing) and get photos you simply could not get any other way. Stunning ones by those who know what they are doing with just the right lens for that situation. I chose the white blossom photo because of the white highlights, there were others I could have used for an example. I shot a race today and I did not get my exposure right and did not shoot in RAW for the action shots won't go into why, shot all the stop action shots in sports mode. Thank heaven for Photoshop. The runners are too dark because the camera metered on the whole scene, the bright buildings in the morning sun and the runners were mostly shaded. I should have chosen a mode where I could use partial metering. Now I am going to have to use the shadow highlights tool to correct most of them, shot 595 photos. You can batch process, I don't know completely how to do that, so many things to learn yet, but as far as I am concerned, CS2 was worth it just for that one tool, shadow highlights which will fix most of the keepers for me (I actually got a bunch of duds I will toss) even though you can probably do it in other programs as well. That is going to be a lot of work and is an example where you color correct even though you didn't shoot in RAW. I shot a few in RAW where there wasn't so much motion. I should have taken some trial shots, read the lcd and histogram (you want a nice mountain touching both ends if you can get it, sometimes not possible, have to compromise) and used those numbers to go full manual or something, don't know yet but will find out. I can't see those little numbers that well for one thing on the lcd or in the viewfinder, and I am not expert enough to shoot full manual a whole series of shots. Some do. There are other ways around that, and I will try to get some answers as to what I should have done from the "pros" lol. If I was able to be any help to you, I'm happy for that. Kind of a hasty response; I've been up since 5:30, and it is getting hot. Days of it ahead yet according to forecast. As you move along, you will get some "aha" moments, that's what she was talking about. That's the way it's been with me. I need some more "ahas" myself lol.

Foosa, since you mentioned the S5200, I thought I'd give you my experience with mine. I had a Konica Minolta Dimage Z3 until I dropped it. boo. I replaced it with the 5200 primarily based on a good price I was able to get it at. You can see many pics with it on my site below to see what you think of its picture quality. The ones for about the last year are Fuji, the ones before that K-M. Of course K-M sold out to Sony and it uses its lenses now. As usual, Zitro hits the nail on the head. The lens is most of the equation, apparently. While I enjoy the Fuji, I could never get as good of pictures as with the K-M even though the Fuji has alot more megs. The main thing I didn't like between the two was that I couldn't get the macros I wanted with the camera, so I picked up little Canon A720 IS for that purpose. The pics taken over about the last week have some of its macros on it. FWIW, I think you give the best indication of what might be the best answer to your question when you say you are a complete newbie. You might be best advised to get an relatively inexpensive starter camera to play and learn on and then move up to the more expensive dSLR's when you have more experience and knowledge. Unless money is no object. And, the little Canon above would let you find out alot about your interests and abilities without spending much money. I got mine on sale for 139. Here is a link that might be useful: My Photobucket page