Hi

I want to upgrade from my faithful little point & click, but the one thing that I love about it is that it fits in my pocket. (although its pretty large by most digital camera sizes now)

I'm looking for something with a little more control (adjustable shutter speeds/manual focus etc) but not too clunky as I'll probably take it to amusement parks, cons, and other trips. So...

small enough to fit in a shoulder bag, big enough to take good pics. I'm not a professional photographer, but I'd like to take more professional shots & play with settings more than I can with my Powershot S30 (yeah its 4 years old). Thoughts?

I'm pretty loyal to Canon & have heard good things about the Nikon D40

the D40 i understand is really nice especially for novice photographers

as for clunky... all the SLRs i know of are about the same size. you'll come down to options.

if you are used to canon (esp if you have any canon lenses) you will be fine with a rebel digital

I just picked up the Nikon D50 and it was a pretty smooth transition from my previous point-and-shoot. I think that it retains a sufficient amount of the automated features to be usable for non-camera-savvy people (like myself), while permitting manual adjustments for getting the shot just right.

Honestly, I would still prefer my compact Canon for travel purposes and quick on-the-go shots.

nikon nikon nikon!!!

In my experience, Canon destroys with their point and shoots but Nikon is the kind of slr.

Truthfully though, I would look at maybe a higher end point and shoot with more features than busting out a full-size dslr. The portability of point and shoots can often outweigh the features you get with an slr. It's great to just be able to stick a little camera in your pocket and go as opposed to have to carry a separate bag full of all the little things you tend to carry along with an slr (lenses, flashes, etc).

If you can handle being a little hindered by an slr, they're great. Having both is even better though! In Cuba, I hucked my slr through the day and to any fancy events at the evening, but during fun times, I just carried my point and shoot around.

I was actually looking into this earlier today. I am thinking about getting a Nikon D40. This was a really great review on it and gives you an idea of its size compared to the D50. http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/nikon/d40-review/
I think you can get it with a decent lens for around 500 which isn't bad at all.

My girlfirend is looking at this one but is still researching.
Rangefinder - Advanced Point & Click.

cool blog if your interested.

http://rawsumer.blogspot.com/

I would leave the bulky SLR at home....

For going out, I LOVE my Canon 870is. This is the camera that I bring to all the toy happenings at S7....

Olympus makes some advanced point and shoots that are almost fully manual. They're small enough to fit in a small bag but have the ability to be manual. Theyre just not as easy to set as a SLR.

I have and still use a G2, it's only 4.2 megapixel but I never seem to need bigger pictures. Canon make great cameras

CANON DIGITAL REBEL. It's what we're getting (well the british version with a not as cool name) as soon as the fucking pin comes for my cc. Nice feel in the hand, my friend has one of the more upscale canons and it is a lot more weighty.

from what he tells me nikon lenses are a lot more expensive but i've not done any research into the truth of that.

I HATE CARRYING A CAMERA IN MY POCKET don't ask me why, I just can't do it, so with p&c either my partner took it or we didn't have a camera

I bought the sony t7 back when it first came out, even hunted down the euro version so it was black, the thing was smaller than my rzr phone, random skeezy club girl dropped it at a club second week I had it trying to take a pic of me and my friends and tweaked the casing right where the switch is to go between vid, cam, review, haven't used the 500 dollar piece of crap since, don't even know if its fixable.