The main photographic tool

A little primer about categories of photographic tools.
Today we rely on several categories of cameras in order to be able to take a picture.
The market is already saturated with compact digital cameras the so called point and shoot.
They are called like that because this is their primary function. Point and shoot.
These cameras are only aimed at enthusiast and amateurs consumers who have no knowledge about photography and are also not interested in how the photographic process work.
These little cameras are preset from the factory to be able to take decent pictures in a wide variety of conditions ie. outdoors indoors fluorescent lighting,tungsten lighting and so forth.
They offer very little as far as creativity or more specialised applications and do not permit the use of different lenses.
They are however very good at being conspicuous and are very versatile at gatherings and family ocassions ,at the beach and on trips.But do not expect to be able to produce works of art with these cameras.
Even with the high megapixel count compacts the options are still less than with even an entry digital SLR.
Which brings us to the next step up from the compacts - The entry level SLR