(MONEY Magazine) – Digital, digital, digital. When it comes to cameras, it's all you hear about these days. Yes, it is amazing that you can see your photos instantly and then delete the ones that make you look...well, not your best. But amid the hoopla, the prices of high-end 35mm single-lens-reflex (SLR) cameras--the kind with all those buttons and dials and removable lenses--have over the past few years quietly fallen by about 50%, from the $1,000 range to below $500. Forced to compete with the hot new technologies, SLRs have come down to the point where a high-end model now costs less than a middling digital camera. Sure, SLRs look complicated, even intimidating, but you can now set most new models to automatically and optimally adjust every variable, from focus to shutter speed to flash setting. As for the image quality, even today's high-end megapixel digital technology, for the most part, aspires only to the level of 35mm film.

Then consider the inherent shortcomings of digital photography: the alarming rate at which the batteries are depleted, the limited storage capacity (necessitating the use of expensive memory devices), the fact that the prints are often blotchy, grainy and of questionable stability (in other words, don't be surprised if prints fade in a few years). To top it off, you need a computer to get any real value out of a digital camera.

All that said, we'd be foolish to deny the appeal of digital cameras. Thus we called on several professional photographers and professors at the Rochester Institute of Technology's prestigious School of Photographic Arts and Sciences to recommend not only 35mm cameras--which we believe offer extraordinary value at the moment--but also some digitals. Both categories offer dozens of choices and a wide range of features and prices. Which of the current crop best suits your needs? Here are our experts' favorites depending on the kind of picture taker you are and where you expect most of your photos to end up.

If you want high-quality prints under any conditions. You've probably tried to capture a fleeting or moving image--a slide into home plate, a child blowing out candles on a birthday cake or just a particular facial expression--only to find, when you get the pictures back, that you missed the exact moment by a fraction of a second. The problem is that most autofocus mechanisms, while faster than you could focus yourself, still take as long as three seconds to gauge the perfect setting. Not so with the Canon EOS ELAN II, which lists for $620 but costs $475 at www.bhphotovideo.com. It focuses in as little as a tenth of a second. Weighing in at 20.3 ounces, it's less clunky than similarly equipped SLRs and sports all the usual automatic functions: focus, loading, exposure, speed indexing, rewind, light metering and flash setting. It also has a couple of bonuses, like three-point focus, which keeps your subject sharp even if it's not at the center of your composition.

The Canon's one minor drawback? Because it can be switched to manual mode, its many bells and whistles require on/off buttons, which are by necessity jammed into a pretty small space. Spend a little time playing with them, and using the camera is no harder than, say, programming a VCR. But if even that sounds intimidating, we suggest you look at the Nikon N60. Like the Canon, virtually every setting can be made to function automatically. The autofocus isn't as fast, and the N60 lacks some of the Canon's more exotic accessories (like a wireless remote control). But you can learn how to use it in minutes and still get high-quality prints. The N60 lists for $588, but we found it in mid-May for $400 at www.bhphotovideo.com.

If you never want to give your camera a moment's thought--and still want sharp prints. Fully automated or no, SLRs just aren't for everyone. Many people want one button--and only one button--to push when it's time to take a picture. In other words, they want a point-and-shoot camera. Even a relatively inexpensive 35mm point-and-shoot, however, has an edge over digitals when it comes to image clarity. And most point-and-shoots are unrivaled in terms of simplicity and compactness. All this is especially true of the Olympus Stylus Epic Zoom 80. Popular for its sleek, weatherproof design, it has several flash modes for different light conditions and red-eye reduction. And, our experts say, it produces sharper photos than its peers. It lists for $273 but in mid-May sold for $150 at www.amazon.com.

If you want to post your snapshots on the Web. As we said, the appeal of digital cameras is undeniable. For one thing, they allow you to take a photo and immediately see your image. But the real fun starts after that. You can easily put your pictures on the Web or e-mail them. Or, once they're loaded onto a computer, use the editing software that comes with most digital cameras to tinker with the color, remove red-eye, crop and otherwise manipulate the images.

What's more, most of these basic functions are possible with a relatively inexpensive model. Our pick: the Olympus D-360L, which lists for $299 but was selling for $267 at www.buy.com.

A fundamental difference between digital cameras at this level and more expensive models is the resolution of the images. The Olympus D-360L offers only 1.3 megapixels, compared with upwards of three on high-end models--but that's more than enough for viewing images on a computer screen. Its eight megabytes of memory enables you to take as many as 122 low-resolution shots between downloads. And unlike most other entry-level digital cameras, the D-360L has several flash settings for various light levels.

If you want your shots on the Web and on paper. We should be clear about this: Prints from a one-megapixel digital camera will be noticeably grainier than the conventional prints we're all used to. So it's worth trading up to a high-end digital camera if you want digital features and still hope to make decent prints. We recommend the Nikon Coolpix 990, which lists for $1,000 but was available for $869 at www.thecamerazone.com. It offers the current gold standard for resolution: 3.3 megapixels. Better resolution means greater storage needs, and the Nikon comes with souped-up CompactFlash memory that holds as many as 40 high-resolution shots between downloads and speeds up the sometimes arduous process of transferring your images to a computer. The Coolpix 990 is also one of the few digital cameras that lets you attach additional lenses for fish-eye, close-up and wide-angle effects.