From prosumer to SLR...

So why do people go from the world of compact cameras to the bulky SLR ones? Having been bitten by the bug very recently, I am compelled to articulate.
Simply put, its the desire to take better pictures irrespective of the situation you happen to be in. I quite liked my prosumer Lumix FZ-18. I captured some pics, especially landscapes in broad daylight, which I still feel happy about. But once I took the next step and started to use the manual controls more, the deficiencies started showing. Every so often, while taking a portrait against a not-so-plain background, I'd think - oh how I wish I could throw the background out of focus like the pros do. Or, while shooting indoors, I wished I could do it without using the flash and destroying all the ambient light. And when focussing on thin, delicate objects, I wished the manual focussing was a little more usable. And the list went on.

So now that I have one, how is it different?
Having a DSLR is a lot different from having a consumer/prosumer camera. When I was still living in the 'compact' world, I had little idea of how these differences would affect how I took pictures.
The first and the most tangible difference is really the speed. It takes sub-second time to startup and start clicking. Saving pics to the card is pretty much instantaneous too. And manual focus is a breeze using the lens' focussing rings. Where it slows u down is while changing lenses, if you have to. But then most of the time, you have a good general idea of what kind of shots you'll be taking in a given situation, so the need to hurriedly change lenses shouldn't really exist.
Next, and very importantly, is image quality. The automatic white balance is more accurate in general (if you don't prefer to set it yourself), you can achieve beautiful bokeh (blurring) of background in portraits (depending on the lens you've got), easier focussing means that you capture exactly what you want, how you want.
There are a few things I miss from the Lumix though - the compactness of course... and the fact that the lens cover is not attached to the body of the camera but has to be (clumsily) handled every time I want to go into photo-taking mode. Minor annoyances.
So if you are at (what I call) the threshold of your compact camera, like I was, maybe it is time.