When I bought my Panasonic Lumix camera, it was because the Kodak Point and Shoot I had used previously was quite good, but starting to limit me. The lens was scratched, and I just couldn’t get the camera to do what I thought I wanted.

The Panasonic is SLR-Like, meaning it has a permanent lens, but has the manual focus and control that are standard in the SLR. For the most part, it’s a pretty good camera. In my usage, it is only hampered by the tiny sensor size—it’s noisy and lacks sharpness. More than once, I’ve taken a great picture, only to be disappointed when I imported it into iPhoto.

So, this year, with everybody around me buying SLRs, I fell to temptation. I bought a Nikon D40. Wonderful camera, very fast, very flexible, with a lot of wonderful, powerful features. I immediately noticed a dramatic improvement in image quality over the Panasonic. The pictures aren’t any larger, but they are so much sharper.

But until today, I had not taken a picture that I could look at and say “this picture was only possible because I got the SLR.”

Amicus

There are lots of things about this picture that would have been impossible with the Panasonic. Most important to me is the composition. The eagle is in sharp focus, while the background is nicely out of focus with lots of bokeh. If I were taking that with my Lumix, the tiny focal lengths of the otherwise exceptional Leica lens would lead to a deep depth of field. The bird would be in focus, but so to would the distracting and visually ugly parking lot behind it.

Truly, today I am satisfied I made the right decision seeking out this camera.