Cameras

[Glacier]

I'll be the dissenting vote! I use Olympus cameras. I have three Olympus digitals--a C-50, a C-5060 and a Stylus 800. The Stylus is unbelievably easy to use. The C-5060 has a nice auto mode, but it also has tons of settings and can be fully manual. It is a larger camera and hard to carry everywhere. I carry the Stylus with me all the time. It's weatherproof, pocket sized and takes good action shots of the dogs. I pretty much wore the C-50 out. It still works and still take a fine picture, but there's a trick to getting to turn on now. My hubby carries it with him as he doesn't take very many pictures. I figure in the three years I used it, I probably took well over 300, 000 pictures with it. It doesn't owe me a thing.

My next camera, if I can stop giving all my money to the vet, will be an Olympus Evolt 500 digital SLR.

To print a good photo you need 3.2 megapixels. You'll be hard pressed to find a camera with less that anyway. My Stylus is 8mp and the C-5060 is 5.1.

Check out www.dpreview.com for lots of good, easy to read reviews on all kinds of digital cameras.

[4 Dog Mother]

I have used Nikons and really like them. Right now they have Nikon Cool pixes in 3.2 mp, 4mp, 5 mp and sometimes even 6 mp for $200 or less at WalMart, Circuit City, Target and Best Buy (watch for sales although sometimes you don't even need that). They are nice small cameras and I have had no problem with them at all. For 4 x 6 pictures 3.2 mp is all you need. Most cameras in the lesser price ranges have a 3X optical zoom. The one many on this site are now using, the Canon IS 2S has a 12x optical zoom. Which means you can be quite away aways and get a good closer picture. That is my dilemma right now, my Nikon Coolpix 3200 takes great pictures but I would really like that zoom. But then you have a larger camera and I like small pocket size cameras. And to be honest I don't need to spend the money it would cost to get the higher zoom. Which does not mean I won't give in to my impulse though. Hope this helps.