Recommend me a digital camera please - what have you got and why is it good/ not good?

[Cadbury]

Ours has died spectacularly.

Basically, we don't need an all singing all dancing one - just one with some optical zoom, about 5 or 6 megapixels, and most of all, not expensive.

anyone?

please?

we have an old canon powershot. great camera, v. good for pictures inside (alot of the cheapy ones are not).

Nikon coolpix 7600, long shutter delay, hopeless at catching shots of kids playing, they move too fast. Forever deleting pics of backs or half a child.

thankyou goat and moshie.

We have a Canon Ixus - it's brilliant. Small, easy to use, takes great photos and video too.

don't touch samsung s850. it is a bad,bad battery eating monster.

samsung was the one that just died on us - we found that with the batteries too.
I shant be going anywhere near that make again.

Oh no! I tell a lie - it's an HP that we had (not sure why I get the two confused).

ixus is a great camera but not so good on inside pictures.

anyone else care to tell me about their camera?

I have a Panasonic Lumix

mine is an SLR-style digital camera, I've had it a few years, so they probably don't make it any more, but all of the Panasonic ones come up well in the Which? tests.

Panasonic are very reliable, easy to use, and are v. good quality.

Mine is great. Pentax Optio M40. Small and slim, great pictures. Was about £80 in the sale - possibly half price.

i have a fuji finepix thingummy, 12.5 mpix, rechargeable battery (which the lumix ones I looked at for a similar price didn't have) - good for sticking in your pocket.

thanks, I'm not sure I eed something with so many megapixels though. I'm not planning on doing anything close up and fiddly, but all you seem to be able to get these days is8 mp plus.

Ideally, I'd like to spend less than £50 on one.

have heard the cheap ones are a bit, well, cheap

i got a bit intoxicated by the megapixels once i started looking and love the fine detail I get on pics of my dd's

Bear in mind that megapixels don't necessarily equate to fine detail - in fact, higher megapixel cheap cameras can actually have noisier/lower quality images - this article explains it in more detail: Why Pixels Aren't Everything

Canon and Nikon are both market leaders and have some very fine cameras. Canon's PowerShot series are very good for price and quality, I'm not as familiar with the Nikon line-up. What you're looking for is good quality lens and sensor chip to get a good photo - all megapixels do is increase the image size (and larger image size means more disk space taken up to store them all!). 5 or 6 megapixels is more than adequate.

That said, the fujifilm finepix range has some awesome cameras with very low noise in low light (i.e. you can take pictures in a darker room before needing to use the flash without getting a really grainy and indistinct photo), and are well worth a look.

My top tip is to go somewhere like Jessops where you can take a look at all the models. Go with a short list (and the best online prices - often Jessops will price-match). Get a feel for which cameras suit YOU - does it feel right in your hand, are the buttons comfortable and easy to reach, are the menus awkward or intuitive, etc. Then make up your mind from there.

try fujifilm.co.uk- great cameras and also refurbs, which are usually new cameras. I love the finepix long zoom range, take great photos- pretty similar to panasonic mentioned above but cheaper. Get some nimah rechargeable aa's and 4 gb secure card from amazon or somewhere and fab photo time.

oh and agree wouldn't bother with more than 7 megapixels unless you want to start producing posters or similar. I have an older 3 mp sony also that hasn't been completely trashed by children which takes great shots, it's just slow and a little tired.

that is fantastic advice, thankyou.

It it difficult to buy cameras on the high street these days under 8 megapixels.

Cadbury - buy one with a rechargeable lithium battery. Cheap ones usually have AA batteries and we all know how long they last. Honestly, you will be glad you don't have the faff of buying batteries all the time.

I have a fujifilm finepix camera, the F40 - originally paid £200 in Argos just after ds was born in May 2007 (might have been June), as Argos is an easy place for us to get to and it came out well in a newspaper review which looked at 5, as I liked the idea that it would focus on faces, though I'm quite ignorant about the technology. It was taken in a burglary in January this year, and when I researched replacement cost I discovered that it was £150 in Argos and just over £100 from Amazon. There are cheaper models in the range and they may be good or not too, I wouldn't know, under the circumstances I wanted what I was used to and what I'd just about learned to use.

It has a rechargeable battery which needs recharging currently (I'm not very organised) but it's lasted ages and taken a lot of pics which we've enjoyed looking at of ds before needing to be charged. And it's quite light and portable. Just don't drop it with the zoom lens open. On holiday that happened (dp's fault, not mine!) and I think they will mend or replace it for around £100, though we were lucky to find a local camera shop in San Francisco which did a 5 minute repair for $20 (£10 at the current exchange rate).