Digital Camera Recommendations - Palmyra,IL

The Canon Elph series is great - very small and easy to use. One word of advice, go ahead and get the extended warranty if it includes no fault replacement. The Canons are "delicate" - I have had 4 in 5 years, and I am not especially h*** o* them (2 got jammed by dirt blowing around in the city. ew).

I have Cannon Power Shot SD1100 IS and love it. It is small enough to carry all the time. has a large screen yet also a viewfinder(which is the best way to take a shot). I have NO complaints. FYI - the Vera Bradley small tech case is perfect to carry it in! xo

I always, always, always recommend Canon for a simple point and shoot camera. I think they have the best picture quality and color. I am a bigger fan of the powershot A series though over the SD or Elph line. The A series cameras take AA batteries, so you can use rechargeable or not. You can almost always pick up spare AAs on vacation if you run out of charge. I just do not like proprietary rechargeables for a quick and easy camera. The SD and Elph line are more compact, but the A series are quite small these days too, just not as slim.

You have already gotten a lot of recommendations, but I'll add my two cents. We bought an Olympus Stylus 1010 less than a year ago because our old (very old) Sony finally died. We love our new camera and it costs around 200 or less. It is very compact. I can slide it into my pocket if need be. It takes fantastic pictures and has easy point and shoot settings for many different lighting situations as well as manual controls if you are feeling creative. My personal favorite feature is the 7x optical zoom. One note, even though this is part of the Stylus line, it is not waterproof or shockproof like some of the other models. Hope you have a great Birthday full of lots of photo opportunities!!! :)

I love our Canon PowerShot DS1100 IS Digital Elph. It's perfect for what you are looking for and takes good video too.

We love our Canon. It has everything you mention above and also durable.

We have a Kodak Easy Share C913 and I love it! It has 9.2 mega pixels and I did read somewhere that you don't really need anything over 10 unless you are going to taking a lot of portraits! We got ours at Walmart for $89.00!
Happy camera hunting!

I just recently bought a Kodak Easy Share from Target. It was around $150. It is really easy to use I didn't even need directions. I am not terribly tech savvy so you know it really is easy. It has an auto feature so you get a good picture no matter where you are. It changes the color of the picture from color to black and white to sepia. It takes pictures with 10.3 megapixels but you can pick how many megapixels you want to use smaller to save space on your memory card. There are probably a ton of other features you can access and I just don't know how but I love my new camera. Good Luck with your decision.
N.

We have a Canon PowerShot Digital Elph. It is little and fits in my tiny purse. Some digital cameras have a long delay, the Elph is pretty quick compared to other digital point and shoots I've seen. Since it is so small and the lens is close to the flash, there is a greater tendency for red-eye. However, I don't feel like it's a terrible problem. They come it cute colors too :)

B. I have a Canon PowerShot SD1000 Digital Elph that is 3 3/8" x 2" x 3/4". It is great! I bought a little Swiss Army padded sleeve with clip to carry it in. I use a small purse and it fits in there with my wallet! It even does short movies. My model has been discontinued but the newer model has a higher resolution and is cheaper. Go figure. It is the Canon PowerShot SD1100 Digital Elph. I bought it for my daughter for $129 on sale at Office Depot about 3 weeks ago. Check the ads and you will find it at that price. Good luck! Oh yea I also bought a 8GB memory card for $20 at Office Depot so I never have to worry about running out of memory space.

I highly recommend any of Canon's point-and-shoot Digital ELPH Cameras. Go to their site to check them out!! The camera and the included editing software (Zoombrowser EX) are so easy to use - the images are extremely vivid...often punchier than real life. Good luck!!

I'm on my second Canon PowerShot and have never had a complaint (the first one still works, but was an earlier generation with low megapixels. My kids use it now.) Prices have been great lately, too.

I'm not sure what the current models are like (my camera is a year or so old now) but I found that I felt comfortable after reading a few reviews in sticking with Canon, and then looking at features and affordability from there. For example, I had a preference for a camera that takes standard batteries but I was also concerned about flash response time, so I was looking for specific information like that.

I found the review site dpreview (digital photography review) to be very helpful: http://www.dpreview.com/ They have a buying guide, or this might help too: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q408budgetgroup/

I have a Fujifilm that I love!! It takes two pics at once. One with flash and another right away without. I never miss a picture because of closed eyes or smiles that stopped...

WGN Radio does a show regularly about cameras and photography. Steve & Johnnie have a link with camera reviews by professionals and costs. They will flat out tell you who a camera is good for and if it's worth the cost or not...Many callers of this program call in and thank them for their advice. It's where I heard about mine as well.

Canon is regarded as one of the very best. We are on our second and love it. We got the PowerShot SD890 IS. It has 10 megapixels so you can blow photos up with not graininess and it also has a view finder along with the large screen. It's hard to find that - they're all just big screens now - but the view finder is really great on sunny days when you can't see on the screen very well. We Googled for best price and found it for $179 I think. You do have to buy the battery and charger, but you can find good package deals. Good luck!

B.: I logged on to find recommendations as I have a Kodak Easy Share C743 that I bought about 3 or 4 years ago. I have been bitterly disappointed in the pictures and difficulties I have experienced. My daughter takes the best pictures I have ever seen and has a Canon Power Shot that seems to focus on the subject. My Kodak got temperamental after less than a year deciding not to turn on some days making me terribly gun shy of ever purchasing another Kodak product. From the responses so far, it seems Canon appears to be the best choice. J.

Hi B. -

We bought the Olympus Stylus 790 SW because it is "shock" proof (meaning, if it is dropped under normal conditions, it will not break) and waterproof, and we have two kids. We bought it because I wanted to be able to take pictures of the kids at the beach, waterpark, etc, without worry, and I also wanted it to be dropped without it costing us the camera. We've enjoyed it so far - it takes great pictures - and i like being able to allow my eight year old to take pictres without worrying about the camera. I don't remember exactly what it cost - deefinitely not $300 - I think somewhere in the low-mid 200 range. Definitely worth the money.

Good luck!