The most important thing to note about Digital Point & Shoot cameras is their horrible inability to shoot decent low light pictures. Cramming more megapixels on a very tiny sensor makes a nice resolution picture at ISO 50 and 100, but completely unacceptable noise at ISO 400 and above. If you want/need a P&S (point & shoot) digital camera for low light work, stick to a camera that has around 5megapixels.
Secondly, P&S Digital cameras have horrible depth of field at pretty much any given focal length and distance. Do you like the shallow depth of field you get with film? If so, you can kiss it goodbye with a Digital P&S unless you are doing Macro Photography or most of your subjects are less then 4 feet from the front of the lens. The sensors are so small (typically 1/8 the size of a fim negative or smaller)
I read over the review of the Canon Pro 1 at
dpreview.com and here are my likes and dislikes about it:
Likes
1. Shoots RAW
2. Fast F2.4 lens
3. Tilt LCD
4. Lithium Rechargeable batteries
5. Extremly good pictures at ISO 50
Dislikes
1. Extremly poor digital noise at ISO 400. Worst in it's class. This camera is not for low light photography at all.
2. Tripod mount is not centered under lens. This makes the camera unusable for Panoramas and Digital stictches.
3. Price ranged from $570 to $700. For that, spring for a Digital rebel.
I really think you will be disapointend moving from a film slr to this digital P&S. (My very first camera was a canon AE-1 Programable)
For $758.00 you can get the Older Digital Rebel 6mp with lens kit at
http://www.buydig.com/shop/product.aspx ... DIGRBL1855
Or look into getting a used Canon 10D off of ebay.
There is always the Rebel XT with the 8mp sensor and a little better performance too.
