I am by no means a professional photographer, despite what my wife may think about the pictures that I have taken with my crappy little, old-school digital camera.

(For photos I have taken with my digicam please visit my Flickr account.)

Granted, I have taken some killer photos with my little broken point-and-shoot (PAS), but don't let my pictures fool you. I may seem like I know what I am doing but I have so much to learn about lighting and settings.

Every camera grows old and must be laid to rest one day. The time has come for my little Nikon Coolpix 3100 to go bye-bye.

My future baby (sorry mom, that title had no reference to us being pregnant quite yet) isn't the hottest, newest model of camera on the market but it's less than a year old and will do the trick just fine. It will be bells and whistles above the Nikon 3100 for sure!

Since Valerie and I are going to Europe at the end of this month we decided to fork out the cash and pick up an SLR (high-end digital camera).

We've decided, after doing some budget-setting and research, to go with the Canon EOS D5.

We are gonna get the Nikon D50 which comes with a free 22-90 mm lens with purchase and also comes with a lithium battery and a recharger, FREE photography classes for a limited time, a Quantary 70-300 mm lens, a 2GB High Speed memory card so we can take hundreds of photos in Europe without having to download them onto a computer, and to carry it all a holster case that can be carried on the shoulder, hip or by hand.