photography  

Modern compact digital cameras take really good pictures for sure but a SLR digital takes it to another level. You would have many more options for different kinds of photography. First and foremost would be the advantage of interchangeable lenses. You would have the capability to put telephoto or zoom lenses on it that would give you a much greater range to pull in far off objects or the other extreme, a wide angle lens that would let you get much more in your landscape scenes. A SLR gives you many more options for taking specialty shots such as double exposures, taking pictures in low light or varying light conditions, adjusting exposure times, varying flash level, etc.

There is a lot more you can do with a SLR but their not for the average photographer either. If you're really into photography as a hobby and you want to expand your capabilities to take higher quality photos, you should get one. If you primarily just take pictures occasionally or when you go on vacation, the compact digital would probably be just fine.

The big difference is picture quality. The very best compact cameras have interchangeable lenses (like an SLR) and match the more basic SLRs for image quality, but have far fewer lenses to choose from and their viewfinders are electronic devices, while SLRs have optical viewfinders which are amazingly bright compared to compact cameras. The few compacts that can match an SLR for image quality are also very expensive. The Leica M8 is about $US3,500, the Olympus Pen is about $1000.

Several features make the SLR a better camera: apart from the viewfindes, they have very large image sensors compared with other cameras, with much bigger pixels. They collect more light and generate less "noise" so pictures are much sharper, more detailed and "Cleaner". They can be enlarged or cropped far more without losing quality, and they can take really good photos in poorer light.

SLRs are faster. They can take more photos in a shorter time and transfer them to the memory card a lot quicker. Some compact camera appear to be faster (a couple of Olympus cameras hit 13 frames per second) but to achieve this, they reduce the resolution to 3 megapixels or less and the photos are rubbish for anything more than small web images. SLRs on the other hand can m anage high burst rates at full resolution (eg the Canon 7D can shoot 125 18 megapixels pictures in under 20 seconds).