interesting...however...

Thanks for sharing with us.

I am not sure if I can completely agree with you though.

If you ALWAYS view your photos on screen, yes, I agree any reasonable digital cameras should be fine. Your screen resolution will most likely remain at the range of 1k+ * 1k- for near future, which is a lot worse than those cameras.

Or if you only want 4*6 prints, agree! those camera are ok too.

However if you want to have prints of 8*10 and use an average consumer camera, you have to do everything right (while taking a photo) to get decent prints, which is hard.

Any decent prints larger than 8*10 would be extremly difficult to get with an average consumer digital camera.

High-end consumer cameras and profesional ones not only enable you for larger prints, but also give you rooms for errors that sometimes are unavoidable.

Also, high-end cameras/lens give you better color that most digitals still can only dream of today.

But I do agree with you that the gap is narrowing. Maybe in 3-5 years, we will see a good consumer camera with the quality of today's profesional ones. But by then profesional cameras will progress to next level too.

my 2 cents.