Photography, which camera?

[GreatForest]

I recently bought a canon powershot digital camera. I thought it was great.

But now I want to take photography more seriously and I'm considering buying an SLR camera. The only one I can afford is £300 though.

Can anyone tell me what SLR cameras can do that normal digital cameras can't do?

I'd like to create sharp, colourful photos. Good night shots (mine just look crap, even on night setting) and those effects where everything but the subject is blurred out.

Will any SLR do this? will a normal digital camera do it but I'm just not doing it right? etc

Basically, is it worth me paying £300 for a new camera? Will my photos be much better?

slr means you can swap lenses, so e.g. for low light situations when you don't want to use flash you can get a faster lens that allows more light in. as your abilities improve you can buy more expensive/specialist lenses to suit the situations you shoot in.

for improving flash shots you can attach a separate flash, rather than using the one on top of the camera, so have more options to diffuse the flash light, or point it somewhere other than straight at the subject's face.

picking which part of the shot is in focus is called depth of field - you need to be able to adjust the aperture settings to choose whether you have a narrow or deep area in focus. i think you have the option to set this on some compacts, but can definitely do it on all slrs.

so an slr will give you greater control over your pictures, as long as you're prepared to put the time in learning/experimenting. but it's worth bearing in mind that an slr will be heavier/bulkier than a compact camera, so you will be less likely to carry it around with you everywhere. taking pictures all the time is the quickest way to improve. i find having a decent cameraphone is as important as having a good slr - technically the shots will not be as good, but i'm more likely to capture the moment because i always have it to hand.

so think carefully about what kind of pictures you want to take. i mainly wanted something for taking candid non-flash shots of the kids at home, so size/bulk was less of an issue and low light capabilities were essential, and i would say the quality of the pictures, and the natural moments i would never have otherwise caught, paid for the camera within a week. (i went for a less-than-max-budget body plus a very fast lens)

haven't looked at slrs recently, but the entry level ones are around that price - see if you can get a good deal in the sales perhaps. is jessops on the rocks yet? bet they're offering good deals atm. you need to try out all the ones in your budget and see which is easiest for you to use and if you can discern any quality differences between them.

forgot to mention with slrs you get to choose the "film speed". it's a tradeoff between quality and low light ability, so when you have loads of light you can choose maximum quality, but can ramp it right down (more grainy/noisy) for low light situations, it's a very useful feature.

If you want to learn how to be a photographer- all the technical knowledge- I would advise you to get a mechanical film slr and take a city & guilds at your local college. Move on to a digital slr once you have mastered the basics (perhaps at a later stage in the course)

A camera is only as good as the photgrapher using it. A better camera will give you more control over the pictures you produce, provided you have the skill to exercise that control.

I have this which i bought last year, its easy to use and not too heavy.

I would also recommend a Nikon although slightly over budget.

The only down side of SLR's is the prices of the lenses, they seem to cost more than the camera but if you can manage with just the 1 lense (which comes with the camera) then it wont cost you the earth.

I havn't been on any courses (i would like to) luckily my dad was a photographer so he gives me a few tips.

If any one is still interested in this there is a short and useful guide to the main differences between compact and SLR cameras on this site.