Its time to ditch your compact digital and think about an upgrade. When it comes to digital photography, most photographers will tell you there’s nothing better than a Nikon. And for Nikon, there’s nothing better than the Nikon D300 Digital SLR. SLRs take a little skill than your point-and-shoot compact. They have a wide array of controls, interchangeable lenses, expanded mount modularity and plenty of other pro features.  The Nikon D300, Nikon’s flagship, offers 12.3 megapixels, a 3 inch LCD display and the standard connectivity you’d expect from a high end digital camera.  Keep in mind that the megapixel number is not a yardstick of quality, as the grade of components, lenses and pre-storage processing have the greatest impact on image quality.  With that, you’ll find the D300 as the ultimate upgrade into a pro digital camera.

Buy: $2,240

Celestron’s VistaPix 8×22 model puts the cool back in binoculars. The magnifying tool has long been clunky and burdensome, but the folks at Celestron have designed this lightweight (11 oz) model for easy mobility. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. There’s a built-in FM radio and best of all, a 3 megapixel digital camera lens. Now you can take great pictures of anything you spy. They even thought of putting a flip-up LCD screen, so you can easily preview your image. The binoculars’ zoom reaches 8x, but combined with the LCD screen’s 6x zoom, there’s an insane potential for 48x zoom. Spying falling stars (or whatever else you’re into) has never been easier.

Buy: About $250.

The Leica M8 has the same type of features you can get in the analog M system, including the rangefinder. If you don’t know Leica or are a “dump analog” digital purist, chances are much of this camera may be lost on you, but for those who are hooked on Leica the very appearance of the name is enough to justify wanting some quality time with the M8. It’s important to note this camera is sold at this price as “body only” which means you’re going to need to pick out a good lens before you can get to work with this beauty. As with many cameras at this price point, the Leica M8 shoots in RAW mode as well as a variety of .jpg sizes.

Buy: $5,495