You asked..
Garrett said:
Can you give an example... I was more or less looking at a 20d since the quality if pretty fricking irrefutable. I would love something more portable and of the same quality for "general usage".
The big difference from a user's POV is that pretty well all point and shoots have a slight delay between the time that you press the shutter and the actual exposure. This drives some people nuts. But one can learn to compensate by pressign the shutter half-way before actually exposing.
There is a documentary photographer, Alex Majoli, who uses P+S cameras all the time for award winning work.
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-6468-7844
He uses various Olympus models. See the above link.
I bought my G2 when they were around grand, I also have a Minolta G400 that I occasionally use. But the G2 is my work horse. It has focus assist -- that little beam that helps focus in low light and a hot shoe and an excellent rotating LCD screen. It is somewhat bulkier than the tiny Sonys and others but it has a lot of easily accessible features. That series is now up to G6. They are all the same except the later models have longer zooms and more pixels.
All except one shot on my web page (see above post) was taken with the G2. The one that was not I took with a 3.2 pixel Kodak. I sold it because it had no focus assist.
If I upgrade, I would probably buy a 20D with a fixed (non-zoom) lens for portraits. I am waiting until it drops in price. Or, I may hold out for somethinbg with a full 35mm size sensor.
And then there is the Leica Digilux... but the post would be too long.
So, is this a sex board or what? I apologize to those who don't take pix . .