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I'm biased. While, the small handheld cameras are nice, for really great image quality, you do need a nice dSLR because of lense quality. Right now, the leaders are Nikon, Canon and Sony is coming on strong. All have shipped new cameras at the entry level now with the Canon EOS 450D. Cameralabs has a good quick comparison. Here are recommendations right now:

If you don't have any lenses yet

If you don't have any lenses yet, then this is the big decision, because the main investment in a digital SLR is not the body, but the lenses that you buy. Right now, my lense investment is literally 20x the body investment, so that's the big decision. There are 2.5 major families right now to consider. Canon makes its own imagers and has the most worldwide share, but Nikon has lots and lots of lenses and uses the higher volume sony imagers. Finally, Sony acquire Minolta (the old #3 in cameras) and is really adding lots of technology.

Right now 99% of all folks can get a 12 megapixel camera with a superzoom (12x) and that is just about all the camera that they will ever need. Each of the vendors now has such a model, so here are the top recommendations:

• Nikon D40x and Nikon 18-200 lense. This is a great combination. The lense is image stabilized and quality is very, very good. When you grow up a little, you can get the incredible professional quality 70-200 F2.8 lense or really anything that is F2.8 in that family. Finally, when you really grow up, the D300 is just an amazing camera. It is also 12 megapixels, but it is amazingly fast. You can take pictures at ISO 3200. What that means is that the relatively slow 18-200 with the D300 at F/3.5-5.6 can take pictures in the same light as a D40x does with a very expensive F/2.8 lense (each doubling of ISO, means you in effect get double the light, so a F2.8 lense at say ISO 1600 is equivalent to an F/1.2 lense at ISO 400)
• Canon XSi and Sigma 18-200 lense. This camera doesn't come out until April this year, but is the response (finally!) to Sony and Nikon just kicking them. No review yet on this one, but it has a 12 megapixel (up from 10 megapixel) and hopefully will have a faster imager.
• Sony. This is the dark horse, but the great features here are great image quality (same imagers as the Nikon) and built in optical image stabilization which means you don't have to buy lenses that are stabilized.

If you are a Nikon lense person already

I'd say right now the right choice is probably the D300 because it is such a fast camera. Although expensive at $1500 plus, this body is really quite remarkable. it has a 1.5x lense factor but most importantly it takes great pictures at ISO 1600 or even ISO 3200. Drool, drool.

You can use your existing lenses, but if you don't have one, getting the superzoom listed

If you are a Canon lense person already

Then you are in a little bit of tough spot right now. The Canon 5D is a full frame camera that is great but pretty old now. Feels like this is going to get upgraded soon, so I'd wait for that. Abset that, the Xsi is a pretty good value, although doesn't have the speed potential that the D300 does.

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I'm so torn as to whether or not getting the Sigma 18-200 OS makes sense. Photozine.de reports it is soft at 35mm, but pretty good at 18, 50 and 200mm. The Pophoto.com review shows that it has better image quality at 200mm than the much acclaimed Nikon 18-200mm. Rick at Fredmiranda.com reports the same thing, it is amazing at the ends of its range, but in the 35mm range, it is soft. This is apparently a design issue with the lense.

Still at $500 street it is pretty amazing.

Well, my camera is dirty on the inside. The internal sensor is dirty. Bob says that you need some special tools from

I’d recommend getting the wipes, the fluid, and the wand for serious cleaning from Micro-Tools.com that will cost you about $25 overall:

• SensorWand 14mm for Cleaning 1.5x & 1.6x Sensors. This is a magic thingy that you wrap pad around and then soak with Eclipse to clean the sensor
• Eclipse Cleaning System. This is the actual cleaning fluid
• Pec-Pad Lint Free Wipes. This is the wipe that you put around the SensorWand stick

And for light cleaning:

D-SLR Brush - Sensor Cleaning Brush for 1.5x & 1.6x Sensors. This is a fine sensor cleaning brush. You blow air through the brush and it becomes statically charged. You lightly whisk across the sensor and the charge on the brush attracts dust. $25
* Blowers. They have a set of air blowers. The cheapest is the Envi-Ro-Tech at $9 for compressed air. If you are going to do more, the CO2 Power Clean I is $20 with a 38 gram CO2 cartridge.

(Make sure you have a clean air supply… some canned air has residue in it).

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If you have a fancy tripod, you need a special dove-tail plate that works with Arca-Swiss type quick release clamps (Arca, Boga, Kirk, Markins and Wimberly). They are expensive at $45 but perfect for video cameras that go on fancy ballheads like the markins q10 on my tripod. See the Nikonians to order it.

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The Nikon d40x uses the high speed SDHC flash card. You can now get 4GB versions of these things. Canon uses the bigger CompactFlash card. Sandisk for instance has one that is 2MBps or Class 2. As an aside an SD card is 2GB or less, an SDHC card is next generation that is 4GB to 32GB and has three speed classes. The big difference is that SD is FAT-16 while SDHC is FAT-32

Sandisk just announced the 8GB SanDisk Ultra II SDHC Card. This is the latest and supports 9MBps write and 10MBps read. I've been using the Sandisk Extreme CF cards and they seem to work well.

Lexar Professional SDHC 4GB 133x is another example, it is technically Class  and transfers at 20MBps.

Pricegrabber has the list of what's popular. The SanDisk Ultra II 4GB is about $65 and and right now Lexar 4GB 133x has a $30 rebate on that brings its price down to $45

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If you have Nikon (unlike me!) then what's the best choice for a prosumer right now? Probably the d40x based on DPReview.com. It is a 10 megapixel camera and streets for just $600. Plus the kit lenses are good. The 18-135 is sharp, but has big problems with vignetting and with chromatic aberration plus distortion. It's only the equivalent of $100 extra compared with a body according to Pricegrabber

So the better choices are the 18-55 which is a ok intermediate lense. The main issues are at 55mm, it is a very slow F/5.6 and it is OK sharp, but not great. It also has vignetting. So not a great choice for a real prosumer.

There is an 18-70 that is quite a bit better for an additional $300 from a body. It is a much sharper lense than the 18-55. Like 18-55 and the 18-105, it has vignetting problems. It is F/4.5 at 70mm, so that's not terribly bad.

If you can afford the $800, the 18-200 is the lense to get. It has vibration reduction and great sharpness and ok vignetting. From Popular Photography, we know it can't compete with the very best professional lenses, but it is great for the high end consumer. It does have a complicated distortion issue, so you'd need DxO to fix that.

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Well Nikon (the Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G DX VR AF makes are nice superzoom that is a good reference standard for superzoom. Iisn't fast and does have optical distortion (0.73% barrel at 18mm so you'll want to use DxO, vignetting everywhere below f/6.3 and it is good for 8×10 from 18-100, pretty good for 5×7 at 200mm).

As a general comparison of Popular Photography's subjective quality factor SQF, the really good Canon 10-22mm F3.5-4.5 USM EF-S had A+ performance through the 8×10 range as well and A performance through 11×14. I've printed it at 13×19 and have to say that is amazingly good). And the Canon 24-105MM F4/L IS USM AF which actually didn't do very well. The main issues being vignetting below F/13 at 24mm and F5.6 above that if you are using a full frame camera, but not with an APS-sized camera, so you definitely need DxO to correct that. Also it is slow at F/4, but does have stabilization. For subjectives, excellent up to 11×14 for all levels of zoom. I've seen that it is quite good in practice even at 13×19. As an aside, the Canon 24-70mm F2.8L USM AF doesn't have image stabilization, but SQF is way higher. It is excellent up to 11×14 at 28mm for a whopping 16×20 from 50mm and above).

But very versatile, if you have Canon, your only option (other than the 24-105 F4/L which isn't telephoto enough imho for true tourist work nor wide enough for landscapes) is to go to a third party lense. Here are some choices. As usual, quality can really vary here. The idea would be an image stabilized 18-200mm lense that is also image stabilized and supports the smaller cameras (the so called 1.6x lense factor or APS size sensor in the Digital Rebel XTi):

Tamron 18-250 F/3.5-6.3 Di II Macro

This is a 14x zoom in effect and is in equivalence like a 28-388 on a regular 35mm camera. It is $500 street and light at 1 pound. The tested it on the XTi. The photo quality was really amazing. The subjective quality was excellent as long as you stay in the 11×14" reprint range at 100mm or below and and for 8×10 at 250mm. There is just definitely distortion (so when you use it at the extreme ends, you'll want DxO to fix this when actually printing). There is visible barrel distortion at the very wide 18mm (0.72%) and pincushioning elsewhere. There is also vignetting (or light falloff) around the corners if you are below F5.6 at 18MM or F/8 at 250mm so this is a lense that is only good at bright light or fixing it with DxO otherwise.

From measurements, the image quality was actually better than the Nikon and it is a little lighter, so not a bad choice except for the vignetting issues around the corners where you'll see light fall off (but DxO can fix that post photo).

Tamron 28-300 F3.5-6.3 XR DI VC LD Apehrcial (IF) MACRO

How is that for way too many acronyms. It was just announced and is probably not wide angle enough, but it does have vibration compensation on it. It is more designed for full format (that is like the Canon 5D) cameras, so will be big.

Sigma 18-200 F3.5-6.3 DC OS. This is announced but doesn't seem to be available yet. The big new thing is optical stabilization. It seems the direct competitor to the Nikon. Various sites like Mobileplanet claim it will be available June 16th or.

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Well with the lenses I know I have, I cover just about every situation well but indoor sports for things like basketball.

The 100-400 is just too slow but has great zoom with the 1.6x lense factor, so everything looks blurry.

The 24-105 F4/L is also too slow as I need 1/500-1/1000 second to freeze movement and I can't get this without shooting at ISO 1600-3200 which looks really bad on my now old Canon Digital Rebel XT. (The biggest reason to upgrade now is not to go from 8megapixel to 10 megapixels, but to get the faster sensors with good quality at ISO 800-1600)

• The 50 F1.4 is actually really good on speed, but unfortunately in basketball, you need quite a bit more zoom. It is really good for portraits indoors and it is wicked fast.

The folks at The Digital Picture have the problem well nailed. Basically, you should either get the 135mm if you have the dough or the 100mm if you don't or the 70-200 F/2.8 is you have dough and have a really fast modern camera like the Digital Rebel XTi that can take decent ISO 1600 pictures:

Canon EF 135mm F/2.0 L USM. This is the fastest lense you can get with the equivalent of a 200mm with the lense factor. It has incredible image sharpness. It does add another 1.7 lb or 750g to your kit though and it is $800 so expesnive, but with a Canon Digital Rebel, it is the equivalent of a 200mm lense, so perfect for taking those indoor available light ballet recitals or basketball games.

Canon EF 105mm F/2.0. This lense is relatively cheaper at $400 and also throws pretty well to an equivalent of 165mm.

Canon EF 70-200mm F/2.8L IS USM. You can use this lense only if you've got a camera with great performance at ISO 1600 which isn't the Digital Rebel unfortunately. For instance the Canon Digital Rebel XTi a.k.a. the EOS 400d is just a little less noisy than the 350d or Rebel XT, so doesn't help that much. Actually the Nikon D80 shows the best noise characteristics at high ISOs, but that's the wrong family. This by the way is a function of the in-camera noise reduction programs. Most cameras today are good to ISO 400 and then at 800 and 1600, the noise reduction software is key.

The last problem with the current setup is that Canon really doesn't have a completely versatile superzoom like the AF-S Zoom -Nikkor ED 18-200mm F/3.5-5.6G IF DX VR. I realize this is 10x level of zoom, but for really on the go use, that would be ideal. In fact, right now, if I were to start over, a Nikon D40x plus their 20-200mm lense would probably be the right way to go. Too bad, it is hard to know which way to jump. Nikon or Canon. Test show right now that in terms of image quality, the Nikon D80, D40x and Canon Digital Rebel XTi EOS-400D are identical in picture quality. The main thing is that sharpness is excellent although at the long end 200mm, you should use F/11-F/16

For $750, it's expensive when paired with a $800 camera, but for most folks it is the only lense they'll ever need. (Or get the 12-24mm F/4G AF-S DX is you need a really wide angle).

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I've use Kinesis for travel, but what if you have a tripod, where do you put it. A quick note to Richard over there told me that their Tripod Bags are a good choice. And the Tripod Bag summary is pretty good.

A Tripod bag, the T720 is the medium one handles up to 34" long tripods including a big ballhead. You can carry it in your hand, over the shoulder with a shoulder strap called the Y215 or the Y315 is you want a padded one. You can also ge tthe H245 and convert a tripod bag or a long lens case into a back pack. You also probably want the free H130 which stabilizes a long lenses if you carry it on your back and you get the T220 phone insert so it cushions your back.

So specifically, you need the T620 and the H245 Harness and you get a backpack thingy that you put your tripod in. How cool.

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On our machines, the C:\ drive is fast and small and the e:\ drive is the user directory, one thing that is quite hard is to make sure the various user files in c:\documents and settings move to e:\. You can do a simple thing which is to

Right click on the My Documents and then change them from c:\ to e:\, but this doesn't move any of the local settings like Outlook's gigantic directories or the IE cache.

Wes' Puzzling Blog : Moving XP User Profile. This tells you where the magical settings are. You can just copy c:\documents and settings to e:\documents and settings then go through each user directory in in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList. Double-click the ProfileImagePath subkey and replace its contents with e:\documents and settings\jake. Close your registry editor.