qq on should buy Canon

Since you have well defined your needs, why go as far as a DSLR which is
somewhat bulky to carry about? I'd suggest that you have a look at the Canon
G10 which, while being smaller and easy to carry, offers most of the
advanced features associaated with a DSLR. Offering a 15Mpx image, the big
benefit of a DSLR compared with the G10 is the ability to change lenses -
and with additional lenses costing at least half the price of your DSLR I'd
doubt you'd be going down that road. There are some issues with noise in low
light when shooting at the full 14.7Mpx, but from what you say you're more
likely to be using a lower resolution i.e not 'super-fine'. I operate my
G10 at Auto (which gives me JPG images), but when I want that special shot
use aperture-priority, with RAW images and +2 - 0 -2 automatic bracketing.
All these (and other) settings are retained when I quickly switch to
aperture-priority so I can leave the setting to Auto and in an instant
switch to the preset bracketed RAW settings. I use these "spread" images by
combining with Photomatix Pro, a stand-alone program that creates and
processes HDR (High Dynamic Range) images. You can see how HDR working gives
outstanding photos by having a look at
http://www.hdrsoft.com/gallery/index.php (click on the images).
You can Google for Canon G10 reviews - some give a number of typical images
so you can see just how good this camera performs.

Regards

Xendor