hi there,

i never take my nikon slr with me anymore since i purchased a canon point and shoot. it is now obvious to me that i love canons and want to make the switch.

unfortunately i have a complete d100 setup so it will be tricky!

my questions for you are, what canons are comparable to the d100 and have housings available? i dont need top of the line, nor huge mega pixels, i basically want to do a clean swap with my d100. i will almost certainly go with a second hand camera.

second, can you give me a break down of the quality by model type? with nikons it is easy! with the canons i dont know if the eos or rebel or D or whatever is best. again i dont need the best, but i do need to know what im looking at.

thank you for your help!

Welcome to digideep

I love my Canon and the only thing I will say is you may want to stick with Nikon if you have alot invested in it.

Anyway the Nikons in the series you are looking at went

MID LEVEL ish
D70
D70X
D80

MID LEVELish
D100
D200
D300
D700 (a different breed really than the others, high end)

The Canons which people generally fall between the D70 and D100 Series range, though there are reviews that say the Canon series is more comparable to the D100 Series than the D70/D80 (and you can find countless arguments back and forth between Nikon users, Canon users, Reviewers, etc.)

Canon 20D
Canon 30D
Canon 40D

Right now the Canon 40D can be had (with a rebate running now) for $900 body only.

I think the first decision is how much do you want to spend.  The D300 body only is more to the range of $1500 (the 40D body only is normally more towards the $1100.) Again kind of broad stroke.

I tend to prefer the larger models such as those above due to the placement of controls.  Though the Canon xTI/xSI and the Nikopn D40/D40x/D60 have a nice small portable form factor, I prefer the layouts of accessing f/sstops, ISOs etc on the other cameras and the way they otherwise feel.  I am considering some of the smaller Canons (or maybe even Nikon) as back-up system or easier to carry though.  It is not as if they are bad by any strecth.

Definately see if you can get a chance to handle the models if you can.

Thank you so much for your detailed response, you answered all of my questions precisely!