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Funny, his review of the Nikon D40 (http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d40.htm) helped convince me to take the plunge into DSLR land.

He does rail against much of the conventional wisdom, eg. more megapixels is better -- perhaps this is the source of your impression.

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In my experience, more megapixels is better, but after a point, other aspects make much more difference to the overall quality of the image for most purposes. Going from a cheap zoom lens (the sort of which often comes with the camera) to a cheap prime lens makes a huge difference... an extra 4 megapixels, not so much.

Of course more megapixels is better, everything else being constant. But nothing's for free. Putting the money into better optics, which is by far the factor limiting image quality in a compact camera, is likely to yield better results. The only problem is that it's not a number you can claim is better than the other guys.

It's like with standardized testing: sometimes a number can hurt you, even if it's true, because its plain, seductive nature causes you to forget that it's not the end result, only a proxy for it.

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