OT. Very. Digicam P&S for my sister's Bday

[sf]

Best one? I like the Fuji F10 and S80, but only on paper. Never used one.

I want to get the best image quality/video capability/battery life for around $300 or so.

I'd buy her a REAL camera, but she's not even remotely interested in film. To her, film never really even existed.

 

[VinceC]

Digitals are wonderful for people who aren't hooked on photography but want a nice camera.

If the S80 is a Canon, for the past five years I've been using a Canon G1 which is a slightly more robust version of the concept of the S80. For a camera that genuinely fits in your pocket, the S80 is very, very nice, and Canon seems to be a real leader on digital P&S. I honestly haven't seen a Nikon that made me want to buy it. I've handled the S80 and been very tempted, becaue the G1 is getting pretty old (3MP, which was really boss five years ago) and doesn't actually fit in my pocket very well compared to the S models.

Also, my wife worked for a community newspaper until a couple of years ago. She used first our Canon G1 and then a Canon G2 of her own as her regular working camera, mainly for portraits, and got some very nice results. The difference in the G and S models is mainly that the S models have a slower (f/2.8 instead of f/2) lens that is more compact and doesn't zoom as far.

 

[anandi]

I've found that form factor is often more important than pure image quality for non-photographers. With that in mind I'd recommend the newer Canon SD500 (and variants). Great image quality, not quite as good as the S80 due to the sensor size, lots of megapixels for cropping and excellent ergonomics for the size. 'Cute' too. I'd recommended the old S400/S500 series to lots of folks in the past and all were very happy. Hard to tell between those pix and my Canon G2 which was for its time the top of the line prosumer P&S (and still takes nice shots).