In article , Robert Coe
wrote:

: I come from a background of an old Pentax K mount SLR film camera and a
: long
: period away from photography. A couple of years ago I bought a cheap
: super-zoom digital fixed lens just to find out what the digital revolution
: was about. I am now frustrated with its limitations and looking to go
: DSLR.
: I don't have a lot of money but enough to get started. I like to
: photograph
: the natural world: eagles, landscapes, insects and flowers. I can see
: the budget will have to cover several lenses eventually (sigh).
:
: Given the price of lenses once you start with a system (eg Nikon or Canon)
: you tend to stay with it, I don't see that many are going to jump from one
: to the other although I suppose its possible. This explains why people
: stick to a system but not why they selected it in the first place. I know
: there are other systems but for the point of discussion let's stick to
: those
: two. Why choose one over the other? A couple of possibilities come to
: mind, no doubt there are plenty that I haven't thought of.
:
: One is that the buyer was attracted to a particular body at a point in time
: and bought lenses to go with it. This suggests that at some other point in
: time they could have gone with the opposition if they had a body in their
: line-up that attracted the buyer more. This implies that there is no
: intrinsic difference between the competitors but that over time their
: systems leapfrog each other in appeal according to the models in the
: catalog.
:
: Another is that there is some intrinsic difference between the systems. As
: neither seem to be fading into oblivion if such a difference exists it
: seems
: to be one of style or approach not of basic suitability for purpose. Is
: there such a difference? If so what is? What kind of photographer is
: attracted to one or the other?
:
: I suppose a third is that they were given a Nikon or that Daddy always used
: Canon and that is what they learned on, that is the photographer didn't
: really choose but fell into it. I have no such initial conditions.
:
: There could be other reasons for choosing one system over another. What?
:
: Is this issue covered on the WWW or in any literature? Where?
:
: I am after such general advice that comes from experience and not from
: sales
: brochures. If you recommend one or the other I am more interested in the
: reason why than the recommendation itself, as I might have different needs
: and abilities to yours. I am not trying to start a flame war, I have no
: axe to grind nor (I hope) any preconceived ideas.

I'll give you my experience, for what it's worth. And I suspect that there are
others in the group whose experience is not radically different.

My wife and I were Nikon users in the film days. I had an F-2 and she a
Nikkormat. We had a couple of 50mm lenses, a 28mm WA, and a 135mm tele. But
because film photography was so expensive and time consuming, we had largely
fallen away from photography when the digital era arrived.

In 2003 we decided that we needed digital cameras to take pictures of our
grandchildren. Our daughter spoke highly of her Canon S50 P&S, so we went
along. Martha chose an S50 and I a G-5. But like all non-SLR digitals of that
era, those cameras had a high lag time between what you saw in the viewfinder
and what you got on the card.

no, definitely not all, and it was very easy to reduce lag to
imperceptible amounts on cameras that did have lag.

the real problem with a lot of those cameras is that the overall speed
was slow, such as time from power-on to taking a photo, how long it
took to achieve focus, how long it took to write out an image to the
card, etc. those can't be changed.

That mattered a lot as the kids got more active,
and by late 2006 we had become so frustrated that we decided we had to go
DSLR. That was a decision point, as we had no investment in removable lenses.

what happened to the couple of 50mm lenses, the 28mm and 135mm you said
you had ?

We decided to stick with Canon because 1) they do a good job of providing
superficially similar controls over most of their product line, which I hoped
would reduce our learning curve,

nikon does the same.

and 2) the XTi (400D) had just come out, and
it appeared to possibly be a better value than Nikon's entry-level equivalent.

could be, depending on what you needed to do with it. two features that
particular canon slr didn't have but nikon entry level cameras did was
auto-iso and spot metering.

(We never really considered other manufacturers, as much out of laziness as
for any other reason.)

back then there weren't any other manufacturers worth considering. now
there are quite a few.

Then as we started to accumulate lenses and multiple camera bodies, we did get
hemmed in. As you point out, switching systems when you have a lot of
equipment is a major step. But we soon realized that both Canon and Nikon are
in the game to stay and that whenever one of them pulls ahead in any
significant way, the other soon catches up. That's not to say there aren't
differences, or that one or the other isn't actually a better choice for a
given individual at a given time. That's as true today as it's ever been, with
some conspicuous differences in approach (to high-resolution sensors, for
example) between the two companies. But those differences are of more
significance to a professional specialist than they are to the average user.

everyone is in the game to stay. unfortunately, not all win at that
game. nikon and canon won't be going away anytime soon, but the others
are not so clear.

The bottom line is that your own subjective judgement is probably as good a
guide to making the "right" choice as any other. Try to get your hands on a
couple of models of each manufacturer that you're considering, and make sure
that the overall feel and the layout of the controls won't be an irritant. And
read the user manuals, both for a comparison of the cameras' features and to
see how well those features are explained. After all, if you do buy a given
camera, you want the manual to be useful for its intended purpose.

since the original poster has pentax lenses, his first stop should be
to look at pentax slrs. they're quite good and the old lenses will
work.

he also should consider mirrorless. slrs are big and bulky.