I am starting to feel it might be time to upgrade from my lovely Panasonic DMCFZ18. Much as I love it, and as well as it has served me, I am thinking that the image quality of a dSLR might be a fine and wonderful thing. So I've been looking around, and it's becoming a toss up between two Nikons: the D3100 and the D5000. Both look like good cameras, but I am sort of leaning towards the D5000 because it is a high-end entrry-level, rather than a standard entry-level camera. It also seems to offer more manual control. On the down-side, it is bigger, heavier, has a shorter battery life and 2 megapixels less (although I really don't think that 12 and 14 is such a hige gap).

Any thoughts? Advice? Feedback on either or both of these cameras? Other cameras I should be looking at and that I haven't mentioned above? Or should I ditch the idea altogether and stick with what I have?

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- Anatomy stock can be used for provocative images, but anything showing a head should be used for 'clean' artwork only. I have nothing against provocative art, but bear in mind that it's my face, and that it would be an incredibly disturbing experience for me.
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There are now too many to list sensibly here, but I urge you to check out the little box a bit further down the page, there are some great groups in there.