Directly competing against the Canon EOS 40D and the Nikon D300 the Olympus E-3 is one big, bad shooter: Even for a D-SLR, it's pretty huge. But with girth comes superb image quality and a hearty assortment of features, such as a swiveling LCD, live view, two in-camera image stabilization settings, and an extensive menu system, to name a few. Although it can't quite match the Nikon D300 in image quality or feature set, I have no problem recommending the E-3 as a slightly less-expensive alternative in the semi-pro D-SLR category.