Advice on digital cameras please

[electra]

I want a new digital camera but I have no idea what to look for. What specifications make a better camera? At the moment I have a really basic one that came free with our lap top. I don't really want to spend a crazy amount of money, say up to £250.

Any ideas?

In fact that web site looks like a great place to start...

Thanks - my SIL has a Canon Ixus and I thought that looked good. I want to use it to take pictures and short videos of the children mainly.

I have a Canon Ixus. This is my 3rd. They are excellent!

Have a look at it in those reviews - they seem to be very comprehensive 'professional' assessments.

We have an Ixus at work and although I don't use it often it looks good to me.

More or less confirming what you have already been told but cannot stress check the shutter lag enough if you plan to take pictures of your children. If its too slow the wonderful picture you think you have just taken will turn out to be the back of their head running into the distance.

Again most are now over 6 megapixels, all have digital zoom and get the best optical zoom you can.

digital camera magazine has reviews

more here

Also beware cheap deals online - the camera you receive may be imported so you may have power supply & computer problems (obviously someone more techy could give you more details!!)

Digital zoom is worth absolutely nothing IMVHO. You can do a digital zoom on any pic when you get back to your desktop. It is basically the same as the crop function in any photo editing software. Nothing more fancy than that.

Optical zoom however is a godsend.

do NOT be fooled by megapixels. I thought it was great mine had 10mp - I cannot send the photos as they are too big, they are a nightmare to do anything with. I think I read somewhere 10mp is for like poster size, 5 is enough for normal photos.

2meg is enough for 6*4 prints actually, although if I had more than a 64Mb card I would probably use 3meg

Agree that Canon Ixus are fab. Just bought my second one as I managed to drop my first and now the sound doesn't work on the film mode. the one I bought is the Ixus 60 - really compact and light and takes brilliant photos.

i have an ixus 950ti. it's a replacement as the screen on the back broke on my original one. as did my mother in law's. and another ixus i had . it takes great pictures but doesn't score well on reliability. oh, & the i7 takes rubbish pictures.

infor on teh megapixel myth, warning tis very geeky .

The upshot is that to get a picture that is twice as good you have to quadruple the megapixels, and lets face it you are not going to upgrade from a 3MP to a 12MP are you? All it will do is massively increase your file size

"Unfortunately, it's all a myth because the number of megapixels (MP) a camera has has very little to do with how the image looks. Even worse, plenty of lower MP cameras can make better images than poorer cameras with more MP"

there is a table telling you theoretical print size limits but I guess that is probably not true if you are bored enough read my first link properly

Thanks again for all your help