Now I’m SLR shopping. The Fuji Finepix F30 P/S (point-and-shoot) is an incredibly great camera, and I’m completely impressed with it and the pictures I’ve been taking with it (and occasionally posting here). However, there are some things that simply do require an SLR with the proper lens and as I get more and more involved with my F30 I’m finding those walls in more and more places.

But, I have a problem. (Of course, this is me.)

I have a budget of $500 (easy) to $700 (hard) to get a camera kit.

I’ve narrowed this down to a short list, but I’m more than open to adding cameras to it:

• Nikon D50 ($500, one lens)
• Canon Digital Rebel XT ($600 one lens)

• Olympus E-500 ($700, two lenses)

I’m not terribly happy with the images from the Nikon or Olympus at higher ISOs, but for standard ISOs they’re not terribly bad. Besides, I have the F30 for those photos. The Canon is remarkably popular, but it’s still rather highly-priced for what it is and how old it is.

I’m leaning towards getting the D50, waiting a year, and then selling it and getting the D80. Unlike the silly D40, the lenses between the D50 and D80 are 100% compatible.[1]

So, for those of you that have a DSLR passion … if you had no lenses and could start all over with a brand, which would you choose? None are really impressing me at this point.

¹ In the D40, Nikon did not include an auto-focus motor in the camera, instead relying on the lens to do the dirty work. This made whole ranges of lenses incompatible. To their credit, they expect the D40 to only appeal to a cheaper crowd that would only get those lenses anyway.