Help me buy a digital camera please?

[Geoff D]

Want to buy a digital camera, but am completely in the dark - could anyone point me in the direction of any decent sites with recommendations, comparisons, that type of thing.

I'm looking at a budget of about ?200ish - is that enough for something reasonable?

If anyone could suggest some makes & models, that'd be great too

[Square]

My advice, Mr Angel, would be a trip to Tottenham Court Road. My flatmate picked up a 5 megapixel Sony for ?300, ?70 less than anywhere in Bournemouth.

[Super Stu]

Kodaks will have excellent CCDs for ~ ?200 mark.

If they can make CCDs which cost tens of grand to go on telescopes, I'm sure you'll agree their digicams will be alright

[mid]

I'm very, very pleased with my Sony DSC-P8. Its only ?229 from Amazon (when I looked around last month for one Amazon was a good ?30 cheaper than anyone else, but Jessops on the highstreet can be talked into pricematching if you're very good), and has a much sturdier build quality than the DSC-P72, which is the other option I'd recommend looking at. That one is ?187, should you be unable to stretch to the P8. Don't forget to budget your ?50 or so for a nice big memory stick, as they only come with 16Mb ones, which isn't much.

These two are only 3Mpixel (2048x1536) rather than the 5Mpixel of the more expensive ones, but I doubt very much you need 5Mpixel. 3M looks fine up to about A4 or so, and for larger than that I'd strongly recommend going for a good old-fashioned 35mm machine. Otherwise all you do is make yourself get fewer pictures per memory stick for no real benefit.

By the way, if the mods don't object too much, can I be a teeny bit cheeky and ask Amazon buyers to use this referrer? I know that some people don't like referrer links, but this one gets Amazon to donate to the charity Depression Alliance 3% of your purchase price.

[Shimmyhill]

Canon make the best lens's around that money by miles.

A60 = 2.1Mp @ ?140
A70 = 3.1 @ ?220
A80 = 4.1 @ ?270

Kodaks have useless lenses and over compress the images so avoid (Super Stu - bit of a assumption on your part there, even in Digital SLR kodak are not all that - until ur talking 4k or so), Sony's are pretty good with a Carl Zeis lens otherwise avoid.

Basically do not get caught up in the mega pixel wars, fuji, sony, kodak -all have high MP but piss poor lens's - a good lens is much more important than the end MP rating.

At the moment the Canon A series, G series (?600 +) and Eos Digital (?900+) are the best digital camera's around.

[Super Stu]

I stand corrected again. I only know about proper CCDs

[Geoff D]

Thanks for the help fellas - much appreciated