Robespierre: that thread is about a Sony laptop, not camera. I have one of their cameras (DSC-W1, great camera, it's sucessor, the DSC-W7, is a little overkill, but still great, btw), and it's built like a tank, still works great after several rather high falls on concrete, no problems whatsoever, & takes great pictures. Don't condemn a whole label because one model of a different product is faulty; if that were the case, no one would buy iPods or Dells or pretty much cars at all.

difficult to recommend from UK because camera models(particularly Canon) seem to change on either side of the Atlantic.

Given that the young lady in question is 14, and the budget is $200 I don't thnk many of the cameras recommended above would be suitable.

If it were me, I would be looking at one of two options. Amazon list a Canon A610 for $199. This is a 5mp camera, with a 4x optical zoom. I have an older A70 3Mp camera that takes superb pictures, that blow up to 8x10 inches with no problems.
I really like Canon cameras, and this one seems to be easy to use, but with a few more complicated features that could be used if the daughter develops (sorry) an interest in photography.

The other alternative, for a lot less money, but would take perfectly acceptable pictures would be a Kodak Easyshare 340 or 330 . Around $125 on Amazon. Friends have various flavours of Kodak digitals , and I find the lower end a bit "plasticky" in feel, but there is nothing wrong with the image quality.

I agree with giving a Kodak Easyshare, that is what we gave our daughter for Christmas a few years back. I organised with other members of our family to give the camera cover, battery charger etc so she was set to go.
The camera has been with her to Reunion Island, Canada, her school ball and everywhere in between with no problems. It takes great photos, we are more than happy with it.

Hi M,

I would look for a refurbished Canon A60. It is 2-3 Mpx (depending on the year), has 3X zoom, very good optics.

It does video with sound.

It will be more than enough for her. If she finds that photography is interesting, it has many features that will allow her to do more than just point and shoot.

You can find one for under $100.

You can find a 512 Mb flash card for about $40.

I like mine very much.

Thank you for your replies. I'm trying to find something today. Still a bit confused but now am more informed. The reviews aren't always clear if the camera has video. Also, I've been advised to only buy a camera that uses standard AA batteries in case we can't recharge. Also, do all cameras take the 1 gb card?

Hi M,

>...buy a camera that uses standard AA batteries in case we can't recharge. <

Buy 8 rechargeable AA batteries. Keep 4 in the camera and carry the other 4. Recharge the originals when they go dead.

You can always buy some AA batteries. You can't always get the battery packs.

>Also, do all cameras take the 1 gb card?<

No. Some take CF cards, some take SD cards, etc.

I wouldn't put all of my pix on one card anyway, in case it failed.

I took 1050 shots using 3 128 Mb CF cards on a Canon A60 (highest resolution); brought back about 850, and still had room left on one card.

You edit your shots, movies, in the evening.

mc, different cameras use different memory types. These include CF (compact flash), SD (secure data, I think), SM (smart media, used in older cameras I think) memory stick (Sony only). I believe all of these come in the standard sizes:
128MB, 256MB, 1GB, 2GB. MB stands for megabyte, GB for gigabyte. As you might know, 1000 megabytes = 1 gigabyte.

The prices of the different types vary a little bit, but I think they are in the same ballpark.


And I highly recommend this article:
http://www.nyip.com/tips/flashcards0604.php
It was posted by a helpful Fodorite quite some time ago. It has good information about taking care of the cards so you hopefully won't have any failed card problems. They really shouldn't fail if they are handled carefully.

grsing: that thread is about <b>Sony's corporate attitude towards reliability and service</b>, <i>i.e.</i>, &quot;if we screw up and sell you poorly engineered crap, we deny all responsibility.&quot;

The fact that your camera works okay is great, but that doesn't really mean much, because many Vaio owners have been lucky, too. The thread is about the myriad who haven't, and what happened when they reported their issues to Sony.

Check out this previous thread:
http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...p;tid=34785296
for some good tips on buying a digital camera.

Sony is hardly the only one to suffer from that ailment. Google the problems with Canon's mysterious E16 error, that Canon doesn't deign to do anything about, for another example, specifically about a camera.

Who said Sony was the only one? I was pointing out that the poster should think more than once about buying anything with that label.

Now we find that the Canon E16 also has issues that the manufacturer won't fix. Good to know.

&gt;Now we find that the Canon E16 also has issues that the manufacturer won't fix...&lt;

Not quite true. I believe that the Canon A5 and A6 series had some problems with the &quot;power off&quot; process that showed up as an E16 error code on the screen.

It happened on my A60.

I called customer service, and they had me send it back, and shipped me another camera, within one week of my complaint, all at their expense.

Two things:

1. There are 4 main types of memory chips that consumer digital camera use these days: CompactFlash (CF), Secure Digital (SD), xD, and MemoryStick. The first two are usually about half the price of the latter two, per MB.

For example, you can often find 1GB SD or CF cards for &lt;$30 without rebate. Same size MemoryStick may cost close to $50 and xD close to $60.

2. Video eats up a lot of memory, especially if one shoots at higher resolution. For example, at 640x480 30 frames/second (broadcast quality), a 1GB card can hold at most about 15 minutes of video. To increase shooting time, one needs to cut down on the resolution or frames/second. If one's planning to take lots of videos, get a camcorder.

&gt;Google the problems with Canon's mysterious E16 error, that Canon doesn't deign to do anything about...&lt;

Not quite true. I believe that the Canon A5 and A6 series had some problems with the &quot;power off&quot; process that showed up as an E16 error code on the screen.

It happened on my A60.

I called customer service, and they had me send it back, and shipped me another camera, within one week of my complaint, all at their expense.

Just google it, and that experience, like mine with Sony, is by no means not the only one that has been had. Seems a lot of people get the error right after the warranty runs out, and then they are SOL. Just saying, don't judge any brand too much (except the really cheap crappy ones), research the model itself as extensively as possible.

On the other hand, rkkwan's statement about MemoryStick is a valid criticism of Sony; it is a PITA to be locked into a non-standard memory, though I've managed to find pretty good prices on eBay, even for new memory. Still a little more than you'd pay on standard stuff, though.

Every company screws up once in a while. Compare the customer satisfaction of the Vaio owners with that of ira. See the difference?

It (almost) doesn't matter if a particular model is a lemon if the company will <b>take responsibility</b> for it and make it right. It's easy enough to google <u>that</u> and not buy anything from a manufacturer with a history of lying and stonewalling.

ira got lucky; look at all the complaints about the Canons with the error, many of them are highly pissed off and have not been satisfactorily resolved.

Gosh, this is getting argumentative. I said that Sony's stonewalling their Vaio problems amply demonstrates that they don't take responsibility for their design failures (of which there have been four over several model series)¹. What any other manufacturer does simply isn't relevant.

¹ Capacitor frying, DC jack breakage, memory slot soldering, heat dispersion.

Wow! A thread with posts from Robespierre getting argumentative. Who'd have thought...