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The new digital SLR
How the camera turned into a computer – or how everyone can be a professional

Photographers have always liked being photographers, almost as much as they have enjoyed creating images. Part of this has been because of a certain mystique and glamour associated with work that can, in the right hands, be associated with art. While it is true that you have to have an eye for it, other essential ingredients have been the equipment needed, the knowledge required to wield it and the money to buy it. It is these last components, more than an innate world view, that have set many photographers apart.

Simply put, many photographers feel like artists not because they see better, but because they're in a position to afford the equipment needed to fiddle around with reality. There's not much you can do with the everyday family point and shoot camera, apart from point and shoot. With an SLR, though, you can blur the background, get an extreme wide-angle view or use a telephoto lens powerful enough to catch the light reflecting off a camel's eye in Bidiyah. You can make flowing water look like brushed velvet, add filters that will burn sunsets into your memory and generally clown around with image manipulation the moment you raise the camera to your eye.

Digital technology has turned this little pie topsy-turvey. Intel's co-founder, Gordon Moore, predicted the breakneck progress of technology way back in 1965, when he said that the number of transistors on a silicon chip would double every 24 months. Such predictions have so closely mirrored our desperate digital advancement that his words are now known as Moore's Law. With the progress of chip technology and its ensuing mass production, digital equipment has become cheaper and accessible. Just think of how computers, once big enough to fill rooms, are now not just on everybody's table, but in most people's palms.

And photography, like most other things analogue, has turned digital too. This means that cameras are now really computers that take pictures – the heart of your equipment is a silicon chip, and not the film or the glass in front. Which brings us to the crux of the matter: when cameras turned into computers, they benefited from a technology that was being developed across the world, from Silicon Valley to Tokyo. This means two things: one, that photography's stagnating film technology has now shifted to the dynamic world of semiconductors and chips, and secondly, that it is getting increasingly affordable.

We are seeing the results of this shift as we discuss these points. A rush of the next generation of digital SLRs is being shipped into markets worldwide now. All of them offer the ability to capture digital images better than we've ever done in the past and raise the bar across a number of fields. The new standards – and keep in mind these are all just entry level SLRs – are ten megapixels of resolution, 2.5 inches of gorgeous LCD display and improved handling of digital visual noise. Most offer additional goodies, typically revolving around in-camera editing, like black and white modes or the increasingly commonplace anti-vibration technology.

Best of all, most will be around RO400 – an astonishing situation in an industry previously only within the grasp of the rich. Do remember that this is the same industry that boasts of lenses as expensive as cars and cameras that cost as much as houses. These are extreme examples, but the truth remains that photography is a bottomless pit in which you can throw as much money as you have. This is still true, but today's mass market technology means that for RO400 worth of camera, you could take a picture that most people wouldn't be able to visually differentiate from that of a professional DSLR that might costs a couple of thousand rials more.

This is a monumental breakthrough in the development of the ways in which we capture images, and, more importantly, express different views of the same things. Everyone is now on the same level playing field, from the photographer with the international travel publication to the weekend shooter on a day trip with the wife and kids up the Jebel Akhdar. Now, the only thing that will set their images apart is the most important ingredient in photography: the photographer's eye. While so-called purists might bemoan the advent of digital technology, it has, surprisingly, refocused on why we shoot in the first place: documenting our worlds through unique compositions and, in doing so, expressing ourselves.

Nikon D80
The Nikon D80 replaces the D70s, although the previous one continues to be sold. It is quite a breakthrough camera in that it is basically the internal computer technology of the professional D200 in a smaller, lighter amateur body. Many of its improvements are hand-me-downs from the D200, including the core image circuitry, menu system and on-screen help. The D80 has the D200's 10MP image sensor, the look, quality and colour of the D200's images, the D200's huge viewfinder and the D200's almost three-dimensional 2.5-inch LCD. And after condemning thousands of D50 and D70 owners to a clumsy, two-handed method of enlarging photos during playback, Nikon has finally discovered simplicity: on the D80, a pair of buttons (marked + and -) do the job. A new menu lets you edit a copy of a photo right in the camera – crop, reduce red-eye, apply a colour filter and so on – although it's hard to imagine who wouldn't prefer doing this sort of work on a computer. All this easily makes the D80 the best DSLR in its price range.

Canon 400D
The Canon's screen is bigger than before (2.5 inches), autofocus has been improved, its burst mode can sustain its three shots per second rate longer and the price has, on international websites, dropped by US$100.

The big news, though, is Canon's sensor-cleaning system. Every time you change a lens, dust can drift inside. It's crushing to discover that a blurry shadow, cast by a speck of dust, mars the same spot on every picture you've taken. The 400D's sensor, however, does a little shudder every time you turn the camera on, like a dog shaking off water. Dust is flung onto a strip of waiting adhesive, leaving the sensor clean. Sounds space age? It is, and it's being developed by other, newer players too.

The 400D has also become one of the world's smallest and lightest SLRs, but this is bad news if you have big hands. Ergonomics are worse, and you'll have to leave your little finger dangling in thin air.

Pentax K10D
If you thought that Pentax had faded away into oblivion, think again. It's back with a bang, with a DSLR so serious it can take on heavyweights Nikon and Canon. The K10D has upped the ante, with such technologies as a self-cleaning sensor and body-based anti-vibration technology that counters hand shake. Most of Canon's lenses, and now an increasing number of Nikon's, offer this technology as well. Unlike the Pentax, which stabilises your shot no matter which lens you use (the technology is in the camera), you'll have this technology on only Vibration Reduction and Image Stabilisation lenses of the other manufacturer's.

Already ahead of the competition, this ten megapixel head turner adds fuel to the fire, with 72 rubber seals that weather-proof it (the same number on only the most processional of Canon models). You'd have to spend hundreds of rials more on a competitor for that kind of build quality.

Sony Alpha 100
Sony is big in the sensor market, and with its acquisition of Konica Minolta's DSLR division, it has entered the fray. While its exterior sports the usual polycarbonate finish associated with amateur cameras, it boasts of an internal magnesium alloy frame. Its 10.2MP CCD sensor will compete with the D80 and 400D, while perhaps competing with them with price (though this has not yet been announced). Like other entrants, the Alpha features such welcome technologies as inbuilt image stabilisation and a dual stage dust reduction system. Not only does a special coating over the sensor repel dust, but the sensor also shakes particles off.

It also has an eye-activated autofocus system that senses what you're looking at, and focuses on it. Move your eye up to the viewfinder and the camera focuses on whatever it's pointing at, based on your selection of autofocus zones. This feature can be turned off to prevent it from focusing every time something nears the viewfinder. There are nine selectable AF zones, with eight linear sensors and one cross-type in the center.