Michael, I certainly look forward to reading your article. At the "prosumer" level, the latest crop of digicams and DSLRs seem to be converging toward direct competition. The DSLR certainly provides more flexibility, as well as the opportunity for higher image quality because of their quieter sensors and (potentially) better lenses. The digicam is more convenient, although with some sacrifice of image quality, but it's difficult to determine just how much sacrifice that might be. It's more than a bit confusing, as confirmed by the diversity of replies to my post.
Regardless, every choice involves tradeoffs. As cmma says, it looks like the D70 may well be a better DSLR than the 300D. Nikon seems ahead of Canon in offering a range of reduced-circle lenses for these cameras, and their sensor is slightly larger. But the higher cost of the body and the need to buy all new lenses would make it more expensive than I'm willing to pay. And Nikon lacks the depth-of-field mode that is unique to Canon. That may be overrated, and dumbed down to A-DEP, but I find DEP mode very helpful and use it often on my Elan II (and on the EOS 650 it replaced). The A2 lacks that feature as well, but the greater depth of field of its very short lens may compensate for it.
The 300D has the advantage of letting me use my current lenses (and also to carry the Elan II as a backup camera), as well as its version of DEP. But, as in my original post, I have no idea whether its image quality with my lenses would be significantly better than an A2.
The A2 is compact and convenient, includes a good lens with a 28mm wide end, and and avoids any worries about sensor dust. There is also supposed to be an 0.8x wide angle adapter available. Since it's apparently not yet shipping and nobody has tested it, I have no idea how much image quality it sacrifices to get the equivalent of 22.4mm. The real disadvantage is the sensor noise that effectively limits the ISO equivalent to 100 (or 200 in an emergency). I'm used to the convenience and high quality of ISO 400 negative film, so being stuck with ISO 64 or 100 might be a problem. I'm assuming that the "anti-shake" feature mitigates some of the inconvenience, increasing the effective ISO by allowing longer hand-held exposures. But I don't know how effective it actually is. I just bought NeatImage to help me deal with grain in scans of older color negatives, so I already have an essential tool for an 8MP digicam. (By the way, the new NeatImage version 4 is not only very effective on film grain, but it's actually quite fast.)
I'm in no hurry to buy a new camera (although I'm more likely to think about it whenever I'm waiting for my Canon FS4000US to finish scanning a negative). I have no doubt the technology will continually improve to bring better cameras at affordable prices. But the new digicams and DSLRs are certainly headed in the right direction.
