Digital Compact or Digital SLR?

Summary: Digital SLR is bulky, heavy and take sometime to master, but you can change your lenses with variety focal length.

To answer this very basic question often faced by photography enthusiast, one could simply return back the question, what is your priority? and what is your real concern? Here are some basic things you can consider:

When…?

As far as when is your real concern, remember that “Tomorrow’s digital camera would never capture today’s precious moment.” So there is no point of waiting the next model launching, because better model will continue to come out forever.

What…?

Remember that the best camera in te world in the hand of lousy photographer would never produce the best photo, but the best photographer in the world would most likely make a wonderful picture with virtually any camera.

Balance.

When you are on a safari trip in Africa, your small pocket digital camera you used for occasional snapshot would obviously be inadequate to capture a nice bird. But when you just want to print a 4R picture on regular basis or you just use your picture on your website, a 14 megapixels digital SLR camera would be an overkill. So, depending on what you intend to with your images, make a careful compromise between time, money and your convenience when selecting the your gear. Even when you can afford to buy the most expensive SLR and their lenses, these gears would be less convenient to carry around.

Which One Is Best Suited Your Need?

Key Differences	Compact (point & shoot)	SLR (Single Lens Reflex)
Size & Weight	Smaller and lighter	Larger and heavier
Cost	Lower and cheaper	Higher and expensive
Shutter lag	Long	Short
Speed (frame per second)	Usually several seconds per frame, longer in RAW mode	In reverse: several frames per second
RAW Mode	Yes, in high end model. But it will slow down your speed	Yes, nearly in all models and not slowing down your speed
Noise	Higher but can be corrected (separate processing)	Lower
ISO Sensitivity	Lower (for good quality up to 800) and noisier above 200.	Higher, up to 12,000 in high end models
Dynamic Range	Lower but can be increased, especially in RAW mode	Higher

After reading all those concern and evaluate the comparison table and you still find it difficult to resist your internal temptation, our best advice is, “Do what most photographers do, buy them both..!”