Hi David,

I use an Olympus C-5050 (current model is now C-5060) which is a 5-megapixel model and comes with a 3X zoom lens. I take lots of flower & garden photos as well as "people pics". I think it does really good work on close-ups. For the majority of the pics I take I use automatic settings and treat it like a point-and-shoot camera and it "does me proud". I've been teaching myself a little more about White Balance (especially for indoor pics), remote control and sequential shooting, and some of the many other features the camera offers. If you have time to order one over the Internet, you'll probably get better prices than buying through a local retailer...I did. With today's greatly reduced prices, I wouldn't go for anything less than a 5-meg digital. I'd also prefer a bigger zoom than my 3X, altho it does great for the uses I've stated.

PCWorld has a good web site at:
http://www.pcworld.com/home/index/0,tk,dfTAB,00.asp

They have lots of good info on digital cameras, often ranking the top 10 best in given price ranges and listing on-line shopping sources along with customer ratings.

They also have a section entitled "Digital Focus" by Dave Johnson (I believe he's a Microsoft employee)..you can sign up for a free newletter on this or other subjects. Dave walks you through the process of doing many digital things, especially with photo imaging software...I think it's a great resource, especially for novice digital photographers. Here's a link for the newsletters.

http://www.pcworld.com/resource/newsletters

Hope this is of some help...choosing my first digital camera was difficult, but reading ratings and comparisons offered through PCWorld was a big help.

Patrick

That's great, thankyou Patrick.

Two other cameras you might consider, the HP R707 Photosmart and the new Fuji Finepix F10.

The HP R707 (5 meg)is a good beginning digital camera. It has straight forward menus with in camera help messages available, and they make it easy to email and print pictures. Lots of program modes, like in camera panorama.

The Fuji finepix (6 meg)has useable ISOs up to 1600. That means you can take pictures in low light without flash. It also has great battery life-as in hundreds of shots with having to recharge.

I bought a kodak last year and my research indicated:
-spend your money on megapixels if your style is casual, you'll being taking pics on-the-fly and for all around flexibility
-spend your money on zoom if you are a more meticulous type likely to spend time setting up your shots
-If you have lots of money, buy high pegapixels and broad zoom options

I bought megapixels and couldn't be happier. I can crop and zoom and end up with a striking photograph selected out of an ordinary snapshot. Definately suits my style.

Tried out different brands of digitals, and liked the Fuji line the best, for the fabulous greens it produces. I shoot garden photos to accompany stories about various plants and landscapes, so I'm looking for colour as much as camera performance.

That's wonderful thankyou all for the information. DG

If you want an idea about how well the Olympus cameras work:

http://images.sacramentocity.us/flora/

Olympus C-740.

Wow, nice pics indeed. Thanks.

I just got a Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z20.
I love it.
I've just started playing with the Macro feature when playing in the garden. I took this this evening on the Macro feature. Cool huh?

I use an Olympus C-750 Ultra Zoom and highly recommend it.

Has a 10x optical zoom and 4 megapixels. Fully automatic, partially automatic or fully manual as you prefer.

My only suggestion to add is get one that you can use good rechargable batteries in. My DD's Kodak uses rechargeable AA's and they barely last for 30 pics. We have a Sony DSC V-something which has little square batteries that last for hours and hours and hours of photo taking. (I know this isn't technical knowledge, but honestly what do you expect for 4 am?)And it takes fantastic pictures.

Thankyou all for the great ideas. And terrific pics, too.

I've started small with a Canon A520
and battery recharger and bigger memory card,
now, I have to weed the beds.

cheers David