it depends on what you are doing and wanting to do. slr are a bit more pricey. then you have to buy lens's for it. they are pricey. Rich has the Canon 20d and i am sure he can give 1000 reasons to buy it, just as i can give you just as many to buy a Minolta. My brother in law has the Canon powerpro shot 1 and he swears by it. i take everyday pics mess with some macros and take moon shots. now my moon shots are no where near Richs, wander on over to the non xara gallery and you will see posts there by Rich yself and a cple by Glenn. you can see the differnece in pics. mind you though that they are tweaked dwon form 10mb and 4mb pics to roughly 50-100k. i am going to get a adapter for my camera and a telescope for astronomy photography so then there is another whole world to enter. (no pun intended) http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif go to your nearest camera store and play with the different models. if they are a good store they should let you take pics with them and either email them to you or put on a cd or print them out for you so you can judge what you like better. hope this helps