Okay, I'm years late into the game and most of you know almost everything
there is to know about DSLR cameras so I'm not going to say anything new or
enlightening.  This is simply an expression of my joy of DSLR cameras.

For whatever unknown reason, I got heavy into photography when I was a very
young teenager. I didn't know anyone else who knew anything about
photography. I borrowed $60 for a Pentax Spotmatic. It was love at first sight.

To pay for film and darkroom supplies, I was able to get a cash-job working
weekends. I was too young to work legally.

I majored in photography in art high-school (yes, they really do have them in
some big cities) using mostly 4x5 cameras. I bought my own used 4x5 camera
and, of course, a Nikon FTN.  I was so addicted to photography, my girlfriend
spent her entire life's savings account on a whole bunch of stuff for me.
Needless to say, she's now my wife.

I spent countless hours in the darkroom and spent a fortune on disposable
supplies. Not being independently wealthy (or getting a nickel from my
parents), I continued to work week-ends to pay for the expendables. Rolling
my own film cartridges from 100 foot rolls of film helped save money but the
film and chemical costs ate me alive.

For a variety of reasons, I didn't get into photography professionally.

Decades later, I needed to buy a digital camera so that I could market my
house that I was selling and didn't want to use a real estate agent. I long
ago sold off my film cameras and darkroom. I bought what was supposed to be
good 5MP digital camera. I was so disappointed by the results. No control
over depth of field, limited aperture range and everything looked so flat. At
least I was able to sell the house myself and saved over $20K in agent fees
so I guess the camera paid for itself.

Being so discouraged of digital cameras, I shied away from them for years.
Then I read an article by David Pogue in the New York Times about digital
SLRs and became intrigued. Eventually, I bought a 10MP DSLR.

I couldn't believe the great quality of the photographs. The endless startup
time on my old digital camera which frustrated me to no end has been
eliminated. I can snap off 3 frames/second and automatically bracket my
exposures and so much more. The price of a 2GB Sandisk Extreme III CF is now
ridiculously cheap and so fast compared to the old 256MB memory sticks.  And
most importantly, the photographs now look like what I used to get from my
Nikon FTN. And, I can change lenses!  Miracles of miracles.

Even though we're not doing too well financially right now, again it was my
wife who said to go for it.

I bought a bunch of Photoshop books and Photoshop CS2. No need for a darkroom
and endless costly expendables.  I now have a lot less free time while I'm
learning. I watch less TV and the house isn't being cleaned as often but it's
all so worth it.