aaronnorth said:
Just noticed this and virtually fell off my chair. This is like saying that beef got a better rating than lamb, or that Picaso is rated higher than Da Vinci. The two eyeballs and their associated brain cells located in between them, peering through the viewfinder are what matter the most. The camera hardly matters. It's job is to get out of your way and to allow you to get the image you want seamlessly. The difference therefore between two or three competing brands is based on how well each accomplishes the various tasks. How is the menu structure? How easy is it to find what you want and to change what you want? How does it feel in your hand? Where do your fingers fall naturally when holding it? Is it heavy or light? Does it have features you'll actually use?
What does best actually mean? Different cameras do different things better. What is it that you are looking for in a camera and what type of things are you going to photograph? You would get a much better idea if you spent some time in a camera shop actually holding some samples in your hand and having the guy in the shop demonstrate the virtues of each within a given price range than trusting some magazine. it's unlikely that you can tell the difference between two cameras of the same class by looking at sample photos, that's for sure. Ideally, it would be better to actually rent or borrow a few different SLR models each for a week or so before making a choice.
Here are 4 photographs each taken with a different model Nikon SLR. There are technological differences between them such as megapixels, sharpness, IOS capability, color rendition and so forth, but mostly the differences are what buttons one has to push to get the shot and how easy it is to change or correct settings gone wrong. It's impossible to tell the difference from the final product though, and these pics could easily have been taken by any equivalent Canon. The cameras used were D200, D40, D70s and D3.
But which image was taken by which camera? It's impossible to tell without the exif data. The subject, it's composition, lens choice and post processing has more to do with the final image than the camera itself at this level. You would need to make 40 inch wide prints to start seeing camera differences in the images.
Cheers,
It's too bad they can't rate the raters... 
