Parents Buying Digital Camera - Any Suggestions?

[Soul Rebel]

My mom is heading to Washington D.C. during spring break with my sister for her band trip. We have a FujiFilm Finepix S3000 but she finds it a little bulky.

What she wants is something that is as close to, or under, 150 bucks and that she can fit in her purse easily. She doesnt want something so tiny she could lose it but something small enough to have a nice grip in the palm of her hand so she doesnt get it stolen. She also wants good picture quality.

We have found a few cameras at Wal-Mart in that price range but with their limited selection I feel that if she buys there she is not getting the best she can. The guy there also told her that digital zoom was basically worthless and that it provides crappy pics. I didnt totally understand what he was saying but I know the digital zoom on my camera, the Finepix S3000, seems to work just fine.

I dont know what he was saying but I have the feeling he didnt know what it was either.

Anyway, with that budget and the size constraints....are there any cameras I should suggest to her? Any places we can trust to buy from online?

 

[Digital Matt]

He was right. Digital zoom is worthless. It just interpolates the image. Your best bet is to look at dpreview.com. $150 is not much budget for a good digital camera, but you outta be able to find something decent. I've always like Olympus or Canon for point and shoot digitals.

 

[markc]

As Matt said, digital zoom is like doing a crop and then resize in photoshop, which usually will do a lot better job of it. The optical zoom uses the actual lens to zoom in and out.

 

[Soul Rebel]

Thats what I figured. That the optical was the lens and that digital was the camera taking care of it in a software type manner. It just sounded odd that this feature would be so totally worthless. I guess the guy was right then, lol.

I took a look at dpreview and found a few nice cameras. There is a Canon Powershot A520 that looks pretty but is a bit more than our budget. We just might have to raise it a bit.

Thanks for the advice.