Digital Photography for the average guy

[evulish]

I'm a big fan of Canon and Nikon cameras. I own a Canon S410 which might be out of your pricerange, but all of their cameras are quite good. My family has two Nikon digitals which are both excellent. Honestly, I'm not a big fan of Kodak cameras, but maybe that's just from my dislike of their film cams. I never thought their color was very good. Some brands I would recommend are: Canon, Nikon, Panasonic (Leica lenses.. yum), Konica Minolta, and Casio. They all have a pretty wide range of prices from low-budget to pretty high-end stuff. My opinion might be biased, but I usually steer clear of Sony, Kodak, Fujifilm, and Olympus. Olympus may make good cams now, but the one I had was junk (it was a really early cam and rather cheap, so who knows.) I'd highly recommend www.dpreview.com and www.steves-digicams.com. I'd also recommend holding the camera before you buy it. Go to a CircuitCity or Best Buy and just hold on to it. How it fits your hand, the weight, durability. Then shop around on the internet.. you can generally find a better deal there, but be careful if you go too cheap with one of the online retailers, they try to get you to buy a 'bundle' and pay extra. If you try decline this bundle, your shipment will accidently get delayed a month or two. Check out the company you're buying from on www.resellerratings.com