The price of digital SLR cameras continues to fall. As the market for digital SLR cameras has expanded this has had a knock on effect in the range of compact digital cameras that are available. A sensor inside a typical SLR is far larger than one in a compact digital camera. The second reason is the quality of lenses. The beauty of SLR photography is that you can buy specialist lenses for specific tasks. For example you can buy a wide angle lens for landscape shots and a macro lens for close up work. Buying a cheap lens will lead to a reduction in picture quality. Any lenses made for 35mm cameras will have their focal length affected by the size of the sensor on a digital SLR. New lenses have been introduced specifically for digital SLR cameras to alleviate this issue.

MAIN FEATURES

Large Sensors – increased sensor size (vs. compact cameras) allows SLRs to capture high-quality photos in low-light conditions.

High Speed – these cameras are FAST, with instant startup times and zero delay between shutter press and image capture.

No Movies – digital SLR cameras don’t capture movies.

EMERGING TRENDS

Now that we’ve gotten the high level summary out of the way, let’s talk more about some of the developing trends in digital SLR camera technology.

On the flip side, the dimensions of digital SLR cameras continue to decrease.

SPECIAL FEATURES

A year ago, digital SLR cameras competed on a variety of standard features: megapixels, camera size, continuous photo speed, LCD size, and the number of different photography modes.

Dust Control – dust can get on your camera’s sensor when you’re chaning a lens, and shows up in every photo you take. Live View LCD – this shows a preview of the image you’re about to take, much like the LCD on every compact digital camera

The first cameras to use it were the now-obsolete Konica Minolta Maxxum cameras. Konica Minolta sold their operations to Sony, who adopted the IS technology in their Alpha A100 camera.

THE PRICES

There was a day when you couldn’t get a decent digital SLR camera for anything less than $2,000. Now many new digital SLR cameras debut with prices under $800, and these prices simply decrease as time goes on (SLR cameras are a lot like cars and computers in that sense).

Let me be clear though: digital SLR cameras are still not competitively priced with many of the compact digital cameras. You cannot find ANY digital SLR camera for less than $400, and the cameras that are less than $600 have limited feature sets.

Many owners of first and second-generation digital SLR cameras are looking to upgrade to the latest and greatest, so you have the opportunity to snatch up their old cameras at bargain-basement prices.