As mentioned in the arty farty pix thread I'm looking into acquiring a dSLR to enable me to take pix that are beyond the technical abilities of my camera phone. A preliminary list of criteria follows…

*** Should have a wide dynamic range (the lack of this being one of the more annoying limits of my phone camera)

*** Should have a non-proprietary lens mounting system. Don't want to get locked into a single vendor's lens choices

*** Should have a fast frame refresh rate -- I hate having to wait to take followup shots

*** Should be able to save files in a good selection of file types, including RAW

*** Should have focus & exposure stacking ability

*** Should take a common, non-proprietary memory card

*** Should have good battery life

*** Should have a reasonable pixel density

*** Price should be >=$1500USD, new or used

These are what I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are others. Bear in mind I'm not a terribly sophisticated user, so really abstruse features requiring doctoral degrees are not high on my list of gottahaves. Weight and ergonomics are important but prolly not dealbreakers.

So what do you shutterbugs recommend???