Lab

Digital SLRs

The digital SLR camera's time has come. Until recently, the marketing battleground was in digital compact models, but now the big guns have swung and we can reap the benefits of a huge amount of competition. There are plenty of reasons for your next digital camera to be a DSLR rather than a pocket-sized compact. Ever find yourself shouting, "Stay there! Don't move!" to your friends as you wait for your digital compact to wake itself up, extend its lens and finally - agonisingly - take the shot, only for the moment to have passed? Not with a DSLR. Just switch it on and take the shot - there's almost no delay and no shutter lag, and autofocus is blindingly quick compared to compact models. You don't need to be scared of the apparently complex controls, either. Every DSLR on test this month has a fully automatic mode that's no more complex than pointing the camera and pressing the shutter. And finally, there's the value - the price of this month's winner is verging on insanity.