Sorry, prices were a little off in my conversion to USD.
The D40 is ~$550-600 US
The Rebel XTi ~$750-800
SB-400 is ~$120-135 US
Hmm, I would pass on the D40, and spend more money for the older D50...read the comparisons and you'll see why (if you know your photography). Too lazy to check the 3 big comparison sites, but the Fuji F30/F31 (face recognition on the F31) will take ISO 800 pix almost as well as the D50, and unlike the F10, you get semi-manual exposure control ie. aperature/speed (but not both together). There's now a newly announce F40 that kind of continues that line, with higher ISO 2000 rating (but the highest ISO is usually only good for very small pictures at best...way too much noise and
lack of sharpness.
You can now get an internal 7x optical lens P&S, but of course and internal lens design is going to be even more of a compromise than the ones that extend out of the camera body.
All P&S digicams are a compromise, you can't get SLR level quality from such tiny camera/lens combos.
I would still recommend that wider angle
Canon 800is (you can look at sample images for the sites that have done the reviews, and decide for yourself), many people will find those slightly less sharp images 'accepatable'...just not e_dawg or me- casualty of knowing what an SLR lens is capable of. For P&S or dSLR which allow manual custom white balance setting, I would recommend the smaller WhiBal cards to set the WB whenever you can take the time to do it.
http://www.rawworkflow.com/
Then again, for e_dawg & me, when we look at reviews of a comparison of the standard fixed lenght prime 50mm F1.8 v. much more expensive 1.4 (and now just annouced 1.2) we starting thinking the F1.8 is such a piece of crap
, but that better performing F1.4 costs 3 times as much.
http://photo.net/equipment/canon/ef50/
Heh, only MRSP of $1600 on the F1.2
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0608/06082415canon50f12lens.asp
wide angle zooms are a compromise as e_dawg well knows, even for a dSLR. If you need best sharpness, you go for a dedicated prime lens.
I'm looking at the
Canon A710is. 50% thicker, as well as taller than the Canon 800is, it takes AA batteries, and allows for an expensive adapter/screw on converter where you can add accessory wider angle/telephoto lens..but only while the camera is in current production. Offering full manual control, but unlike
some dSLR lens, you only get motorized manual shifting of focus (you cannot grab the lens barrel with your hand and manually focus with a mechanical/precise shift of focus), and that low res 2.5in LCD doesn't help in determining optimum focus sharpness. Also annoying, it the limited 'stepping' in the 6x zoom range, it zooms too fast to allow you to find tune the optimum zoom target focal lenght. I'm sure a year after I plunk down $300+ for this, something much better/less flawed, more feature laden, slimmer (more pocketable) version will replace it. And 2-5yrs later, something closer to what I really wanted today, will finally become available.
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/A710/A710A.HTM
I'm a fan of the old 35mm 1970's Olympus OM1 & OM2, because of their smaller size compared to the average SLR of the time. Only camera smaller with quality level of SLR, would be the very high-end Leica rangerfinder line, which now includes the digital M8 at MSRP of $5k for the body only
. The D40 is smaller, but all dSLR's are way too large considering they don't have to hold film in their bodies.
A unique & innovative dSLR comes from Olympus in their
Evolt 330
But it too is a compromise, irritating flaws beside just the higher price compared to the competition.
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/olympus/e330-review/index.shtml
Let's hope they spearhead a trend to even smaller dSLR's