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Once the DSLR is in your hot hands, you may soon realize the optics make the difference. Most kit lense optics (the ones they package with the camera) are borderline acceptable, and some are worse than others. It may not make a difference if you're printing 4x6s (the manufacturers realize this).
As an owner or prospective DSLR owner knows, the good optics are quite expensive, more so than lenses once available in the recent film camera world. Digital zoom lenses have the same drawbacks as film-based zoom lenses. They're pretty good, but as the zoom ratio increases (wide angle to telephoto), you're going to give up something for all that range (contrast, speed, pin-cushioning, convergence, soft edges, resolution, chromatic aberrations, etc.).
Operational features and their implementation help differentiate the current crop of DSLRs, but there isn't a manufacturerer yet who is offering the "ideal" DSLR compared to the past film versions where you had a choice of equally good cameras and optics. Then, the choice came down to the lenses and ancillary accessories available from the camera system. Unless a manufacturer invests itself in a standard, difficult and/or risky in a changing digital world, the camera system concept is limited to but a few manufacturers. And I'm not so sure those brands have chosen the ideal platform.
Sherwood
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