I come from film mechanical SLR and I want switch to digital SLR (at about 23 July), but I have many question. Any suggestion is appreciated! My budget for now is about 1400-1700€, I’ll expand my system later, so, these are my plains.

*WHAT I HAVE:*
Now, I have a Cosina film SLR, it takes a little button battery to works for years. Power is needed only for built in exposimeter indicator . I’ve never had a power problem, when exposimeter turn off, I can still shot a long until I replace the battery. I haven’t autofocus, auto-exposure, auto programs, TTL or auto flash capabilities, zoom… I have to set all manually, but I don’t find this a limit in a most of situation. I have 3 lenses, a 28 f/2.8, a 50 f/2 and a 100 f/2.0. I have various accessories, a cable shutter (flexible trigger), 3 flashes (Guide number around 18-22 m/ISO100 at 50mm) and 3 PC sync cables each one 10meters long and a light unstable tripod and some filters 80A, yellow and a linear polarizer. I have also a digital compact camera, a Fujifilm finepixA500, brought a couples of years ago!

*WHAT I DO:*
My biggest problem is that film costs too much, I spent about 35-40 euro cents per shots. I shoot color slides because I love their quality, but I found prints very comfortable (but I think my print service have very bad quality). My camera is not sealed, but followed me in many tricky situations, on the seaside, under the rain and also on the snow, where has rolled down as me when I fallen down skiing or snowboarding, protected only by a simple pronto bag.

*PHOTOGRAPHIC SKILLS AND GENRE:*
I shot primarily people: closed portraits (head and shoulders) with 100mm wide open, or environmental portraits with 28mm closed enough to achieve everything is in focus (never opened wider than f 5.6 or f8), often closed at f/22, its maximum. Less used lenses is 50mm. I think I’m not a novice, I’ve taken my camera since I was 10 years old, I’ve read some books on photography when I was about 16, and now that I’m 26, I’ve read everything I could on Internet. I’ve done a lot of multiple flash photos, but It’s very difficult to prefigure right exposure, the shape of the shadows, the right exposure for each flash, and to connect the 3 flashes to my camera with cable.

*WHAT I WANT TO DO:*
In a couple of year I’ve shouted about 13000 photos (landscape, macros, abstract, travel, objects, …and some people) with my compact digital camera, and about 20 films each of 24 photos (480 photos, about 350 people shots) with my reflex. I can’t think shooting people all the time (13K photos), no one could pose for me so much long/often. I like landscape very much, but I live in a place that It’s not the best for landscape. I tried macro for the first time with my compact camera and I like it, but I think it could be repetitive for long time. I tried some abstract, “commercial” photography and composition of various objects.

*DIGITAL TRYOUTS:*
I’ve tried an EOS 400D + Speedlite 430EXII in a party, shutter lag (between focus achieved and shot taken) cause me to miss the right moment too often.
I’ve tried a Nikon D80 in another party. In each cases the 18-55 lens is too short for my taste, it’s good in the 18 range, but it covers at most the range around 50mm equiv that I’m not used to shot. The lack of blurred background at 55mm wide open is the worst thing to me, the second is about composition, too short focal length for portrait!
I’ve tried an EOS 5D + 24-105L in a marriage, and I loved it. I loved 24mm wide end, and I can achieve enough (to my taste) background blur at 105 F4. I didn’t noticed shutter lag.
I’ve also tried another Nikon in a marriage, that was a D50.