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After doing some research and reading (lots of) reviews, I have decided which dSLR to buy. A Pentax K10D. My choice is not without cons though there’s more pros to consider. I’ll describe some focal feature points of this dSLR in brief below.

This dSLR has some serious punches inside its rigid weather-sealed body.

• Anti-Shake - Helps fixing a very common problem of photography, blur caused by handheld camera shake. It is integrated inside the camera so it will work on any lenses fitted onto. That’s a great news since this kind of features only available on high-end dSLR or lenses of other manufacturers.
• Anti-Dust - Featured on some latest dSLR is a kind of sensor dust-removal technique. On Pentax K10D it is called “Dust Reduction” which involved an anti-dust coating to the low-pass filter and and sensor-shaking mechanism to remove dust, which is then gathered on a sticky pad below the sensor.
• Sophisticated Auto Focus - K10D has 11-point auto focus with 9-center points which are sensitive to both horizontal and vertical details. It’s as advanced as the Nikon D80.
• Hyper Program - It’s a program mode in which if you turn the front-dial the camera will shift to shutter-priority mode with the selected shutter speed, or the rear-dial to shift to aperture-priority. A green button is available to return the program to the default exposure-priority mode. Simple, easy, and very useful.
• And so much more, including the dedicated RAW button, digital-preview, 16-segment metering, white balance fine tuning, multiple exposure bracketing, and so on. It’s damn fast too.

From some reviews site I’ve read, the only practical problem of this dSLR is that it often miscalculates the exposure for some very contrast-scene shots. Often a slight exposure adjustment is required for the image to look right. This can be quite annoying for beginners since out-of-the-box this dSLR can’t produce images that look as good as other competitors. Some degree of intervention from the user is required to get the most of this camera. It’s quite contrast as, say, Nikon D80, which get the exposure right almost everytime. This camera is intended for people who want to learn and tinker with the settings. Still, photography is about experimentation and desire, but for some people an instant good-looking result is preferable than the same (also good-looking) result from Learn-Your-Camera-First-Damnit method.

This camera is also less expensive, so I can spend more on the accessories such as the battery grip, a decent tripod (this camera is heavy), a carrying bag, and probably a better lens (the equipped 18-55 lens is already a good lens to begin with but still..), some flashlights, and probably a filter or two, and a greyscale metering device.

I plan to learn photography as a hobby only, but in the future it might be an asset of what I do for a living. Who knows? I want a camera that can accommodate my learning-curve from a total beginner to an intermediate shutterbug.

In the end, a good picture is not about expensive, best in its class camera and lens, but about techniques, good compositions, sense of art, and good eyes for details. Those are things, apart from any devices at hand, the most important and unique for every photographer.