Before Shopping

• 1). Read photography magazines such as "Popular Photography" and "Apogee Photo Magazine." These magazines and others regularly publish evaluations of specific SLR cameras. Read these articles and familiarize yourself with the current crop of features offered.
  
  
• 2). Evaluate your needs after reading some of the articles. Do you want a package with the camera that includes a zoom lens and flash or do you want a camera system with a lot of depth?
  
  
• 3). Determine your budget. Manual focus or SLR cameras run the gamut in price. Generally speaking, the lower-end models are automatic with aperture priority mode and manual operation. Upper-end models include the low-end features as well as through-the-lens (TTL) flash measurement, programming capabilities and more read-outs - such as aperture and shutter speed - in the viewfinder.