OT: Need digital still camera advice

Pix. What's out there for $300. While all the sellers seem to be hyping mega-pixels, I've learned that 3Mp is more than adequate for most app's, and what's much more valuable are reasonable shutter response time and good auto light adjustment.

no matter how much I love my daughter :) But if I can get her something easy-to-use, reliable, rugged, and it takes good pics, for $300 or less, that would be perfect.

Canon SD400 or SD450, fantastic cameras, lots of features, awesome image quality. You should be able to get the 400 for 265 from amazon and the

450 for 300 You'll want an extra SD card for it. If you get the sd400 you'll spend 265 and then you can get the panasonic 256 meg SD card for about 30 bucks and that will put you just under the 300.

We got a Canon A95 that my wife used on our trip to China this spring. She filled up 2-2Gb cards (about 1500 photos on each) and about 1/2 of a

1Gb micro-drive, and it was perfect.

These can be had for under $300, are 5megapixel, and pretty fast shooting time - low shutter lag. The color and white balances are excellent. We were extremely pleased with the results we got. She had no problems with it at all, and we got much better battery life than I would have ever hoped for. Controls are well thought out, and it was very intuitive.

For good reviews and comparisons of most of the digital cameras out there see Steve's Digital Camera Review site:

(We're getting ready to spring for a Minolta D7 SLR body now, so I can keep using my current Maxxum lenses.)

Doug Sams wrote:

Maybe you should go buy yourself a D200 and give her the D70... :-)

Mario

I agree. I have a SD300 I bought in March and it rocks. It's my "travel" camera (camping, etc.). I also picked up a Digital Rebel XT to replace my Elan II. Both great cameras. Put the rebel in multi-frame mode, with an image stabilizing lense, and I can capture great action shots.

(oops - the micro drive was really used in our Minolta dImage 7i, not the Canon! Sorry!)

I'll second the recommendation of this web site. Good impartial information.

My #1 criteria when I was shopping was the mega-zoom lense. After searching for 2 years, the Panasonic Lumix was #1 on my list, but I came across a Canon S1 at a store that was closing, and bought their display model for $128 (not bad for a $500 camera). The canon is 10:1 zoom vs the Panasonic

12:1, but both have the optical stabilizer. I can use the full zoom and still get clear shots even with rather long exposures. Alas, neither of these meets your price range.

ROTFL!

The best thing to have if you're into electronics is a friend who always has to have the latest state of the art stuff. Just buy his used stuff for half price (or less).

There's a lot of good info on that site.

We just bought (for Christmas) our 11yr old a Canon A520 and a 512MB SD card to go with it; a little over $200, including shipping.

Spend a little more and you can get a higher-res camera; we figured that for an 11yr old, this would do quite nicely, and Canon makes very good equipment.

The camera my wife and I use is an EOS 20D... Egads, I've love to have an excuse (and the money) to buy a 5D, but I'd rather have more lenses, first.

-Kevin