The picture of the flying Western Gull above is of a type that I could never achieve with my Panasonic Lumix FZ28 megazoom. A DSLR simply has better autofocusing for birds in flight.
I tried repeatedly to get pictures like this of flying Brown Pelicans with my camera, but never could. Most attempts of flying birds with the Rebel didn't come out this well either, but if I did it right I could get pictures that I was very happy with.
With my megazoom, I could get pretty decent photos of birds if they were close. The Lumix FZ28 has a 10 megapixel sensor, and 18x Leica lens. But I believe the Rebel I borrowed delivers a better image of close birds even though the sensor is only 6 megapixels. This leads a lot of credence to those who bemoan the "megapixel" craze and believe that other things are more important such as sensor size and the skill of the photographer. I like richness of the color and contrast in the above Song Sparrow photo.
Though my Lumix allows shutter speed priority shooting, I never really got results like the above photo of a White-crowned Sparrow. I didn't even realize at the time that I got an image of the tail feathers spread out like this. Pretty cool! Though this bird was very close to me, practically at my feet, I really the quality of the color and detail in this photo more than what my Lumix typically produces. Coming soon: my very own DSLR! Thank you Wendy for letting me try one out hands-on. By the way, the food scrap that the sparrow is feeding on was not placed there by me!
