I personally find that I need a viewfinder. Otherwise, I need to go back and forth with reading glasses for the lcd screen, and it washes out in strong light. I bought a Panasonic lumix G2. It has most of the SLR advantages, but smaller and lighter. There are enough lenses for me, and has all the manual controls of an SLR. The low light is not quite as good as a high end SLR, but overall, very pleased.