Budget SLR

Stepping up to the speed and flexibity of an SLR becomes more irresistible with every passing month, as manufacturers continue to fight for the entry-level buyer with improved performance and lower prices. Starting at about $600, complete with lens, you'll find several high-quality SLRs vying for your attention.

Don't get hung up on the number of megapixels when choosing between cameras. You'd be hard pressed to find anything lower than 10 megapixels from a name-brand manufacturer at this point, and that's more than enough for large prints and cropping out sections of a photo. In our lab testing, it's clear that higher megapixel numbers and better image sharpness often don't go together. Even camera price isn't really a reliable indicator of resolution performance. In our in-depth analysis, we go beyond the megapixel spec to uncover the sharpness, color flaws and lens distortion found in test images shot under tightly controlled conditions.

One of the primary reasons to choose an SLR over a point-and-shoot is the availability of interchangeable lenses. While Canon and Nikon have the most extensive lens selections available, we don't expect most consumers will fail to find lenses that suit their purposes from other manufacturers. You do have to keep an eye on lens compatibility, though, particularly if you're hoping to use lenses you already own. Budget SLRs generally require lenses with built-in autofocus motors for full compatibility. You'll find full details on what works and what doesn't on each maker's web site, and in our reviews.

Even low-cost SLRs offer the four basic shooting modes: program mode, aperture-priority, shutter-priority and full manual exposure. When it comes to additional options, though, it's a decidedly mixed bag. The Nikon D3000, for example, offers just six preset scene modes, useful for newcomers who want to adjust their cameras for particular shooting situations (portrait, landscape, macro, etc.) without making extensive manual adjustments. The Pentax K2000, on the other hand, offers fifteen.

This points to a peculiarity of the budget SLR category. When you move up to more sophisticated SLRs, they tend to offer nearly identical feature sets, and differ mostly in performance. At the low end, there are certainly performance differences, but there are also significant feature variations from model to model, and they come up in unpredictable ways. The Nikon D3000, for example, may skimp on scene modes, but it offers a wide range of in-camera editing tools that are both fun to use and practical, where the Canon Rebel XS offers hardly anything when it comes to editing, but delivers Live View mode (see below) which others at the price lack. It pays to read through the reviews to figure out which compromises you're willing to accept.

A feature found on some entry-level cameras and not others is Live View, which lets you line up images using the color LCD screen instead of peering through a viewfinder. Live View seems intriguing, but it often disappoints due to slow autofocus speed. An SLR uses different autofocus systems when shooting using the viewfinder and when using Live View, and the viewfinder version is consistently faster. We do like having Live View available when shooting stationary objects: a product to be listed on eBay, for example. If you're planning to take pictures at a soccer game, though, you're inevitably going to have your eye to the viewfinder.

Surprisingly, it doesn't take much additional investment today to buy an SLR that shoots both stills and video. Until 2008 you couldn't shoot video at all with an SLR and, when it did arrive (on the Nikon D90), the camera cost $1000 plus the price of a lens. The migration of video (and high-def video at that) to inexpensive SLRs has been surprisingly fast: today both Canon and Nikon offer SLRs that shoot stills plus 720p video for $800 including the lens, and Pentax has announced the video-enabled K-x for just $650. At this price level, you're not going to get the same video quality you would with a dedicated high-def camcorder. At the same time, shooting video is all about having the right gear in hand at the right time, and with a camera that does double duty, you've doubled the chances of catching your friend doing something stupid.