Quote Originally Posted by sunvalleylaw View Post
.... I passed up the Canon AE-1 back in the day as it had too many bells and whistles being both AE oriented and SE oriented, and seemed like it had more stuff on it to break.....
Sorry, but I had to have a little chuckle. I still have a Canon AE-1, as well as an EOS 33 (film) and EOS 20D (digi), and I used to pull the AE-1 out when I wanted to keep it really simple and not have all the bells and whistles I do know what you mean though, it was just funny that I saw the same camera in completely the opposite way.

Anyway, on topic, If I were to buy another dSLR today, it would be a Canon 7D. I'd love a 5D, but I'm a huge, huge fan of the canon 10-22 mm lens, and it wont work on a full frame camera like the 5D.

I also think if you are going to invest in a system (lens/flash etc etc) you are better off going Nikon or Canon. Not that the Sony's etc don't take good pictures, I have a Sony RX100 that is like a little dSLR that fits in your pocket and takes great pics, but Nikon, and to a lesser degree Canon, have demonstrated a willingness to stick to one lens format for many years meaning you don't need to throw everything away every couple of years.

As far as megapixels goes, my 8.3 Mp dSLR takes better pictures than my 20.1 Mp Sony. More pixels means larger images. Not necessarily better ones.

If you want all the hard core (and I do mean hard core) info on a camera, look for a review on dpreview. If you want to get a sense of the kind of results you can expect a normal person to get, go to flickr and use their "camera finder" to show you all the pictures taken with the camera in question.