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Not a professional, but I do get paid occasionaly to shoot. I use it primarily for myself (kids, vacations, etc), but I have done a wedding (first and last), senior pictures, sports events, stuff like that.

Both the X and H are excellent. As you probably know, the major difference is that the X is 5.89 mp and the H is 2.62. The X will shoot 3/sec up to 9, while the H will shoot 5/sec up to 40. The speed is why I chose the H, despite the X's greater megapixels.

I have a couple friends with X's and none of us can tell the difference between an 8x10 from my H versus their X's. I'm sure the larger you go the more you could see the difference. But most people rarely go larger than 8x10. And as I said above, I've enlarged to 13x19 many times and the images are still incredible.

I would recommend, though, that if this is going to be your first camera, you might want to start with something less expensive. I've had 3 other digital cameras (Kodak and Olympus - hey, I didn't know better) and one film (Nikon N80) prior to getting my H. But whatever you do, stick with the same brand. I use the same lenses I had for my N80 on my D1H - so I didn't have to buy more lenses when I got my D1H. Switching brands can get expensive.

The 5700 has a fixed lens, but its a good range (35mm-280mm). The D100 costs more, plus you have to buy lenses separate, but, at least you can change lenses.

Kay,

I am a professional photographer and we use the D1x and absolutely love it. We have had prints made at a lab up to 24"x30" from 17 mb tiffs that look like medium format film.(we also had a 16"x20" print made from a 3mb jpeg that looked pretty good considering it was at ISO 800) I would definately think about what the use of the camera will be in making selections. Sports, photojournalism, action , portraiture, interchangeable lenses and what final output sizes you are looking for. The new D100 is a great camera but has some limitations as far as flash sync. It will only sync up to 1/160 where the d1x will sync up to 1/4000 with the nikon sb80 speedlight. Another consideration might be the new Kodak DCS pro 14n that just came out. It uses a 14megapixel chip that does not give you lens magnification, it's a true 35mm image.(the d1x and d1H magnify the focal length of the lens by 1.5. great for long shots but harder to get wide angle.) I haven't seen the new kodak personally yet just read reviews but I would definately like to take one for a test drive. You can't go wrong with nikon. I've owned 3 different NIkon film bodies and loved all of them!:D

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