The Best Digital Camera

Let's say you are going for a night out or a short vacation and you need a digital camera. You want to travel light. You need small enough to fit in a purse or pocket, but still take great pictures. You want the best camera at the best price.

Look no further than the Canon SD800 IS (or the slightly older SD700 IS). That was my choice after looking at all the usual suspects from Canon, Nikon, Casio, Panasonic, Sony, HP, etc.

It is small and sleek, with no lenses sticking out. The body is made of tough magnesium metal, not cheap plastic, and looks great.

The lense can do wide angle for panoramas or zoom in 3X for detail. Most importantly, it has Optical Image Stabilization. This really reduces blurry pictures in low light. Pictures without a flash look more nature, so this feature is a must have. Beware, many that cameras claim to have image stabilization use electronic methods. It is not as good as optical method.

Some of the newer cameras do not have a viewfinder, just an small LCD monitor. If you travel alot between battery charges, a viewfinder is needed so you can take pictures without using the LCD and draining battery. The battery is Lithium Ion and holds a charge better than NiMH. I have gone weeks without charging.

The memory card is SD (secure digital) which is compatible with most laptops and printers that have a built-in card reader (except Sony which always uses their own Memory Stick format).

The camera can also capture short movies with decent resolution (640x480) and sound. A large memory card, 2 Gigabyte would be recommended.

Most importantly, the image quality is among the best that you can get from compact camera.

My only complaint is the movie compression is not as good as the Casio EXILIM series. The files are huge. This didn't matter to me because if I intend to capture video, I use my Canon HV20 (which in my opinion is the best Hi-Definition camera under $2000).

The Canon SD800 IS, at around $300US (May 2007) is almost the perfect camera and a pretty good price.

Good luck, and hope this Hub helped you in your search for the "perfect camera".