That's absolutely true, but the fact is the better camera can take better pictures. We've maxed out on the quality we're able to get on our PaS cameras (should be POS ), so we want to trade up.

Either way we go, we're planning on learning as much as we can in the time we have before our trip, so that we'll be prepared. My best friend is an amateur photographer, and we'll be asking him for a few lessons


Agreed there. As they say, "the best camera is the one that's with you." I just think I'm unlikely to sling those bulky DSLRs with me everywhere...


That's how I'm leaning at the moment! The primary thing that's pushing us is that my wife's SD1000 is occasionally incredibly slow. We were outside a very nice college campus building last week, and she wanted to take a shot of it. Granted, it was twilight, so the camera has to work a little harder, but she literally stood there for 10 seconds with the button pressed all the way down and the camera wouldn't take the shot. Argh!

Add to this that the SD1000 takes pretty crappy low-light photos. This is, of course, one of the biggest difficulties of all these digital cameras, but her's is particularly susceptible to grainy low-light photos. With the SD1000, we have one of the smallest cameras I've ever seen, but that means a small sensor, and the automatic mode occasionally gets in its own way.