Help me find a camera

dmf985

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I'm trying to find a camera, but I'm having difficulties finding one which fits my needs. Especially since I don't really know anything about photography, namely the terminology which I would need to search for... So I'm probably more of a difficult person to find a camera for. I'm not a professional, nor do I aspire to be one. I don't often take pictures, and I've made it by fine so far with a cheap 5MP camera from walmart. This past winter though I kind of crashed my skidoo and it was in my chest pocket, which then went into the handlebars... So a new one is in order. Here's my needs:

Capable of changing exposure time - There was a fantastic view of the arm of the milky way fading into the northern lights on the horizon of a lake the other week and I wished I had a camera that could take a good picture of it.

Not bulky - I like taking my camera with me when I go out skidooing and hiking and what have you, so something that could fit into a pocket.

Able to take something of a beating. As mentioned above, I'm active with it. It doesn't have to withstand a crash, but nothing fragile would do.

Cheap - Like I said before I don't take many pictures and I do not profess to be a photographer. So no expensive cameras.

Waterproof would be nice, but not really needed.

It doesn't have to take phenomenal pictures. Just your average ones. 10+ MP would be plenty probably. I looked for a while, but then I figured, hey the internet is full of people who love photography, and are experts in this sort of thing. Why not get some suggestions from them? They'll know a heck of a lot more than any Walmart employee. So there's that. What sort of camera should I be looking for? Thanks in advance.
 
What IS your budget?
Repeat after me: Megapixels don't matter. Really. They don't. Unless you are printing a billboard to be viewed at point blank range, you don't need even 10MP, so quit worrying about megapixels.
You are pretty safe if you go with Nikon or Canon. Sony has some nice point and shoots and so does Panasonic.
Most compacts aren't exactly fragile anymore. They aren't going to take a beating, but they're made to withstand bumps and use.
 
Check out a Nikon aw100
 
I guess I have just fallen victim to the ol media hype/consumer culture around megapixles. But the Nikon that you suggested there CouncilmanDoug looks pretty good. Actually about perfect. Only question is the whole exposure time. Can it do that? I read an article about it not too long ago, and the author was talking about setting the time in seconds. However stuff I've read recently talked about adjusting the ISO or something. So what's the deal with that? Is there somewhere on the average camera where you can set it to 10 seconds or something? Or is that just high end cameras? On that Nikon it sounds like you can adjust the exposure. it says -2 to + 2 EV. Is that what I'm looking for? What does it mean? Thanks again, and thank you for the replies already.
 
O and in answer to the price range, that Nikon is in the upper range (330). I don't take all that many pictures so I can't justify dropping a like thousand.
 
getting a good picture of stars is difficult even with a good dslr, any point and shoot is gonna be about the same in that aspect
 

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