Sorry to revive a little bit older thread, but if anyone has a Nikon D200 and has real-world lens advice, I'd appreciate it. I just bit the (big) bullet and ordered the D200. Yep I have read the dpreview and kenrockwell stuff -- which is fantastic -- but additional real-world data points never hurt when looking at this level of expenditure and time commitment!

I shoot mostly medium format film (I have a Hasselblad and a few rollei TLR cameras) but do shoot digital as well. We have the canon Rebel DSLR camera at work and I find it to be a plasticy piece of crap. It takes nice photos but is cumbersome to use.

I have several friends who shoot D70's and love them. I've shot a few of them and they are a nice camera.

If you want a truely excellent camera and can afford to add a 0 to your budget, you can get a nice Hasselblad 501cm and a digital back... the guy at the local camera shop offered to trade me a Digital back for my Hassey in exchange for my Porsche... naturally, I declined.

How about a good quality point and shoot digital camera?

I think the name is the Sony DSC-H1 or something like that. Nice advanced point and shoot.

I'm sort of limited in that I want to buy it with my Airmiles.
There is a Sony 8.1MP Cyber-shot.

I've narrowed it down to the Nikon Coolpix P3 and the Sony DSC-W100.
Any opinions?
I'm leaning toward the Nikon.

I'm not familiar with either of those models, but FWIW I was very pleased with my old (2000?) Nikon, enough that I went back to them when I decided to go to an SLR (which I expect to arrive tomorrow...woohoo).

I just got a Nikon D70s. It is a ton of camera for me. But the thing that I really didn't like about point and shoot cameras was the slow focus and shutter speed. Totally unexceptable for action shots. So I am slowly learning my D70 and liking it.

I already have a Nikon SLR for when I want to take quality shots.
I find I don't take it places because of its size.
The point and shoot is for the "drinking sports".

funny how no one mentioned......................WATERPROOF! now you can have some FUN! rain or shine. despite diving for over 30 years the advantage of a waterproof camera are 10-fold say going to olympic peninsula/alaska/hawaii or anywhere theres moisture. WOULD NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT ANY CAMERA THAT ISNT WATERPROOF! i have a blast with my NIK IV w/o strobe or my NIK V w/sb-105 strobe on land as well as underwater or rainy climates. same with my digital u/w camera. if i want lots of pics i take digital. if i want 36 perfect pics i'll take 35mm's. doesnt matter underwater/sunny/rainy/muddy/dusty. learned my lesson long ago. its worth the extra bucks!