On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 12:50:19 +0100, "Greg Thomas"
wrote:

Hi all,

I am about to enter the minefield of choosing a digital camera. I basically
need it for fun holiday pics and digitising images for use on ebay etc.
However I would like at least half decend picture quality. I would be
willing to spend up to 140 pounds, have any of you had particularly good/bad
experiences with particular cameras. What features are essential on your
camera that you couldnt live without?!

Cheers all,
Greg

You can find cheap 2 meg cameras since the mainstream now is 3-5 megs.
2 megs are ok if you dont print larger than 4x6. 3 megs are so cheap
now though that many will say forget about 2 megs.

For 3 megs theres lots of OK cameras from Fuji to Olympus.
I agree with the othes about getting a Canon if you can find one at
the price you want.

The Olys are ok though small and compact. Kind of depends on your
preferences. For instance my brother will only buy a camera thats very
small and compact . So the Oly 4000, Nikons and Oly 750 etc
traditional looking cameras with the lens barrel sticking out - arent
for him. I dont like cute looking cameras and prefer more traditional
looking cameras especially if it means sacrificing manual controls and
pic quality by going for a dinky , sleek looking soap bar.

I bought a Oly 560 3 meg a few weeks ago and an Oly 750 and also have
an Oly 4040.

There are some traditional shaped ones around the low $200 range in
the US - Nikon 3 meg , Oly 4000 if they still sell them where you are
and the Canon a80. These generally tend to have manual controls.
The sleek soap bar type tend not to but are more compact.

Other than that there are issues about taking movies and sound if
thats what you want - I could care less. And types of memory cards -
the XD cards tend to be the most expensive. If you get some older
camera that still uses smart media (My Oly 4040 does) - all the new
cameras dont use it anymore since it had a 128 meg limit.

You generally want 3x optical zoom - which youll get on all but the
cheapest cameras. There are some $300-400 cameras that have bigger
than 3x optical zooms now. My Oly 750 has 10x thats why I got it.

There are lots of other factors like flash - how effective is it?
Battery life. Would you want the ability to use external flash? I
think none do on a $200-300 camera. Macro ability extreme closeups ,
low light ability , etc. How quickly they power up and time between
shots - time to focus.