Five years ago, a camera with these capabilities would have cost you at least 3,000 bucks. Actually, that's not quite true; you couldn't find a consumer DSLR with imaging at this level of quality, period. Consider that the Canon EOS D30 of 2001 ($3,000, street—body only!) came in with a whopping, um, 3.2 megapixels.
Yes, technology marches on—in triple time. Today, for an entry fee of $570 to $790 (street), you get an interchangeable-lens digital SLR with 6- to 8- megapixel capture, clear and continuous through-the-lens optical viewing, lots of picture control, and, perhaps most important, a full-bore camera system behind it. With their inexpensive (but very good) kit lenses, these models are genuine enthusiasts' cameras—for enthusiasts on a casual photographer's budget. As such, they represent the ideal step up from a compact or EVF.
Putting our contenders to the test
All five are good cameras and great values, but which one is best for you and your kind of shooting? How do they compare?
How we rank them:
Four Factors
1. Image Quality
We subjected each camera to our standard battery of Pop Photo Lab tests for image quality, as described in detail in “How to Read a Camera Test” (December 2005). Resolution measures the ability to record fine detail, the major factor in what people perceive as sharpness. The extent to which a camera can precisely reproduce the colors of a scene is determined in the color-accuracy test. Finally, even a sharp, color-accurate image can be degraded by the electronic gremlins called digital noise (typically, graininess and mottling), so we measure noise levels at all available ISO levels.
To show what these figures mean in real-world shooting, we photographed the scene on the facing page with all five cameras under the exact same studio lighting conditions. All cameras were set to ISO 200 at the same f-stop, using custom white balance, and recorded in the highest-quality, highest-res JPEG available.
Since image quality is of paramount importance to every sort of shooter, we gave it twice the weighting of the other three factors in our overall ranking.
2. Ease of Use
Ever been frustrated in getting the shot you want by a clumsy control sequence, baffling menu, or shutter delay? So have we. That's why we judged the cameras on handling; placement and clarity of controls; logic and simplicity of menus; and such factors as autofocus speed, lag time between shots, and battery life.
3. Control
Control is what separates digital SLRs from lesser cameras. It means adjustability: the extent to which you can precisely fine-tune a picture. Key controls include metering/exposure (movable spotmeter points, exposure compensation, etc.) and autofocusing (adjustable focusing points, tracking, and across-the-frame AF). We also look for depth-of-field preview, flash-output controls, and variable framing rates, along with specific digital controls: how cameras can use specific color spaces, capture in different file formats, fine-tune color balance, and so on.
4. System Flexibility
Plenty of EVF and even compact cameras have equal—or greater—megapixel counts than any of these DSLRs. But to understand the fundamental superiority of the DSLR, all you have to do is press a lens-lock button and switch lenses. A DSLR isn't just a camera; it's the central component of a system that includes interchangeable lenses, accessory flash units, powerpacks, remote controllers, proprietary software, computer connections, and more.
Sure, the casual shooter may be perfectly happy with the built-in flash and kit zoom lens. But it's great to know that system accessories are available for any kind of shot or shooting.
Even the smallest systems provide a good selection of lenses and flash units, and the bigger players—read Canon and Nikon—offer two of the most extensive systems ever devised.
 Image quality revealed
We took our five cameras out of the Pop Photo Lab and into our studio to test them under real-world shooting conditions.
Eye of the beholder: Photographer Rico Poon shot the same scene, lit by a single strobe, with each camera set for custom white balance. The exposure was 1/100 sec at f/13, ISO 200. Images were recorded in JPEG format at the highest resolution available.
We then enlarged each image to 11.5x17 inches—bigger than the size of the facing page. From each of those blowups, we excerpted a 1x1-inch square detail (right). These reveal differences in sharpness, color cast, noise, and other telltale signs of image quality.
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