OT: Cheap digi cam

I got a brand new 6MP Sony Cybershot from eBay last summer for under £100. Catch was, it was a French one, some guy was importing them. Manual etc. was multilanguage of course, but it had a Euro power plug. Bit it's not a problem as you just need to swap the 'video lead' bit for an English one (or chop the plug off and wire an English one on), and job done.

I'd recommend a Casio Elixim, but go for one of the 6 or 7 Mega pixel ones (EX-Z60 & EX-Z70, respectively), 'cos they are quite a bit less noisy than the 10MP ones in low light (long exposure). There are compact cameras with better optics (although not by much), but for size, ease of use, display quality and especially battery life they are pretty much unbeatable - perfect portable snappers.

Good news about the BX, BTW.

Seconded. I have one of the card ones, it's super tiny. Shit when it's dark, but great for your every day point and shoot stuff, and well handy on nights out as it's smaller than most phones so slips straight into the jeans pocket. Also seems pretty beer resistant too. And you can get it in a really foul orange colour, which I have :-)

Indeed :-)

My mother in law has an Exilim and yeah, it does take decent photos for a compact.

Ya big ponce, go and get an EOS 1D :P

I bought my mum a second hand Nikon Coolpix 4600 off a mate. They're about £60-£70 on ebay. They take alright pictures for what they are - bit of chromatic aberration, over exposes a touch etc. and you have to wait for the flash to recharge before you can do anything.

It's easily beaten to death in photo quality terms by a cheap second hand film SLR with a 35-100 lens at half the price, but it's a much bigger piece of kit.

IMO a decent camera phone is up to scratch for most point and shoot stuff these days, and if you're wanting to take decent pictures on the cheap, get a cheap SLR. IME I take the odd daft photo on the phone, and find it's worth taking a proper camera when I think I'll be seing stuff worth taking pictures of (ie, car shows etc.). The £200 upward one piece SLR digicams are getting pretty good but they're not really pocketable or everyday pieces of kit again.

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I have Fujitsu, Kodak and Canon digicams, which IIRC are 2.4, 3.2 and

3.2MP jobs. Of these the Kodak is complete and utter rubbish, it rarely gets used because the picture quality is no better than an Instamatic. The Fujitsu produces the best picture quality, and is the one I use for web work since it's more than adequate. No noise in any of the pictures even at low light levels. And the Canon gets a lot of use because it's a handy size and uses CF cards which I prefer. TBH the Canon lens and the sensor are not as good as the Fujitsu but it does work well in bright light.

Nah, he'll probably replace it with another Canon. For my work I bought a Sony Alpha which after having had a loan of an EOS 400D and a Nikon turned out to be the best on balance. The Sony lenses are better than the Nikon ones. The Sony sensor is the same as the Nikon and the lenses and sensor are better than the Canon and the Sony actually fits my hands.

You won't get any of those for under £100 though.

TBH I'd have a look at getting a S/H Canon Powershot rather than spending on new. There are a lot of "Buy It Now" offers on Canon A540 and A600s (6MP) for about £100-£110 some of them boxed/unused. I'd have one of those it's the sort of purchase no one will regret.