[jyl]

One of my friends has the D50. He mostly uses it for people shots - kids, friends, traveling, etc. In that context, he gets really nice images with relatively little effort. Crisp, well-focused, well-exposed, and it's no sweat for him to shoot 300 images during a 1 hour soccer game, then pick out the best 20. Because of the 1.5X lens crop, a relatively affordable zoom lens gives him an impressive telephoto reach - like 450mm in 35mm equivalent. After we both spent a season photographing our kids' soccer games, me with my usual manual-focus Nikon F4 and black & white film, I've conceded that he's gotten far better images. And he's lugging around less than 1/2 the weight.

There are some downsides. None of his lenses are fast (biggest f-stop is appx f4), which means he can't use selective focus well. In dim light his autofocus doesn't work well, and it's hard to manual focus due to dim viewfinder and no split-screen focusing aid. He can't get a real wide-angle, not affordably anyway. In any sort of unusual situation he spends time squinting at the LCD menu and pushing buttons. So, basically, his D50 works best for daylight snapshots and action shots, and it works very nicely indeed there.

As for choosing between the D50 and other Nikons (D70, D70S, D200, etc), I am not an expert but I believe most people wouldn't really notice or use the difference, unless they are pretty serious photogeeks. I would be inclined to buy the D50 and put the difference into better or more lenses.

As for Nikon versus Canon, to me the D50 feels markedly better built than the Digital Rebel. The higher-end Canons (20D, etc) feel very nice, though. There is no practical difference between 6MP and 8MP or between Nikon and Canon lens quality, for almost all uses. One small advantage of the Canon line is that it includes a full-frame DSLR if you like wide-angle shots and expect to ever spend $5,000 for a camera. One equally small advantage of the Nikon line is that from the D200 on up, they can use and meter with the old manual focus Nikon lenses which can be had used for far less than the autofocus lenses of equivalent quality. I don't think either of those advantages should matter to most people.

Personally, I've been so impressed with my buddy's D50 that I'm shopping for a used Nikon digital SLR body for myself. (I'm going to get a used D1X, because 5MP is plenty for what I'll use it for, and it'll meter with all my manual focus Nikon lenses.)