Your daughter is ready to take her first steps.

She is sitting in the middle of the living room and rolls forward onto her hands and knees. She tentatively assumes a standing position.

It is suddenly clear to you that he is about to stagger across the room. You pick up your compact digital camera and turn it on.

By the time the camera turns on, you’ve already taken a few steps. You point the camera at him, but it can’t focus in the dim light of the living room.

The moment is over: she’s sitting down again, and you’re left without a photo to prove it.

If you hate missing out on moments like this, you need an alternative to your compact digital camera. Let me tell you about the benefits of a DSLR.

SLR defined

SLR stands for Single Lens Reflex, and there are two big differences between SLRs and compacts.

First, the image you see in an SLR viewfinder is the image the camera will take. Second, you can remove the camera lens and put a different lens in its place.

Besides these two differences, there are many other features that make an SLR ideal for a family photographer.

instantly available

You don’t have to wait for a digital SLR to warm up.

Hit the power switch and the camera is ready to go. You can even leave the camera on all the time if you want.

Digital SLRs have a “sleep” mode to preserve battery life. Just push a button and the camera is “active” and ready to take the next shot.

Even fleeting moments won’t be lost waiting for the camera to start up.

Fast and accurate autofocus

Digital SLRs have advanced autofocus systems.

They include multiple autofocus points and can use any of these points to quickly focus on your child, no matter how much they move.

There’s also a mode called predictive autofocus, which tracks your child’s movement and continually adjusts to keep focus sharp.

bigger sensors

Digital SLR cameras are much larger than compact cameras.

This provides a unique advantage: the photosensitive sensor inside a digital SLR is physically larger than the sensor inside a compact camera.

Larger sensors are better able to produce high quality images even in low light conditions.

If you spend a lot of time taking pictures of your child indoors, you’ll really benefit from the larger sensor size of a digital SLR.

no more red eyes

You probably had a lot of red eyes when you used the flash on your compact digital camera.

This is because the flash on a compact camera is close to the lens and the light from the flash reflects off your child’s retina.

Every digital SLR flash appears away from the camera lens, virtually eliminating red-eye.

Although it’s easy to fix red-eye with today’s photo-editing software, is this really how you want to spend your time?

In summary

If you’re a parent and have been thinking about upgrading your 3-year-old compact digital camera, I urge you to take a look at the digital SLR models available.

They have dropped significantly in price in the last two years and are now cost competitive with compact cameras.

Think of it this way: It’s probably worth the extra money to know you’ll never again miss an important milestone in your child’s life because your camera wasn’t ready.