ok coming from a 'prosumer' experienced photographer I have just upgraded to a Canon 350D.
I can tell you two things here. If you go from a decent Prosumer to a DSLR and rely on the cheap lens's then you will be VERY dissapointed, as I have been so far.
If you go from a compact thing to a DSLR then you will possibly not be dissapointed.
Really for my 350D to outperform my Coolpix 8700 I am going to have to spend probably two times the camera body value on lens's. I will say however, while prosumers are very good camera's in general and almost match SLR's for manual functions they are very slow and generally make you work very hard to get reasonable shots... which can be very satisfying though!
To sum up my experience...
Prosumer Pro's
1. often very good optics within a very small package that replace at least two but maybe four lens of a DSLR, or one HUGE lens five times bigger!
2. smaller size, although not always!
3. Very good picture quality at low ISO's (sensitivity to light)
4. You don't always have to look thru viewfinder to get the shot you can use the screen to take pics, and often with a screen that folds out to any angle!
5. My Coolpix has 98% of the functionality of my 350D with some, very usefull functions not on my DSLR!!!
Cons
1. Noisy pics at higher ISO, although they are getting better
2. Slow as heck - if they were quicker they would threaten the cheaper DSLR market! You have to work much harder to get better shots
3. not as intuative to use, although not always the case!
4. you can't change the lens
SLR Pros
1. it's an SLR
2. very low picture noise at high ISO's e.g. I can take a piccy outside in a lit courtyard at night without flash
3. VERY fast response, although I am dissapointed with focus speed on my kit lens - sometimes my Fuji 2800 is as fast, and sharper
You knwo with small prints I wouldn't be suprised if it had the upper hand
4. very wide range of lens's available to cover any event
5. very easy to use!
Cons
1. Size
2. very expensive because you will always want to upgrade, I suspect all the top pics on this site are captured with £300 - £500 lens's maybe more!
3. You always have to look thru the viewfinder, although I wouldn't say this is not so much a negative!
Have you looked at something like a Fuji 5600? very reasonable camera with good prices at the moment. I have heard dissapointing results from the 9500 from many people who upgraded from this camera, but maybe becaus the price difference didn't outweigh the extra features!
Then of course there are the Panasonics which offer some very good solutions...
Then again, I was considering the Coolpix 8800 for some time this is a very advanced prosumer with 10x optical (35-350mm in 35mm equivalent), built in Vibration Reduction and 235,000 pixel viewfinder (as cl
)
), do remember that if you