Bought this for mum on Saturday from Broadways. Got an additional battery, and traded up the 128MB CF card to a 256MB. The shop threw in a pair of “Astro Boy” coffee mugs.
I have pretty much made up my mind before I walked into Broadways, as mum was quite specific about what camera she wanted. I still got to play w/ a few different models thou, like the new Casio R51, the Ricoh one w/ a 28mm lens, and the new super thin big screen Sony Cybershot.
One problem I have found w/ consumer digital cameras is that, they are all pretty fast-responding in the shop, but as soon as you walk out the shop w/ one, it slows to snail pace, and you always miss the shots you want because of the long time lag and/or focus hunt.
I quite like the Casio R51. It was snappy, well made, and relatively inexpensive. Takes AA batteries. The Ricoh felt slightly faster than the Casio, but the body felt cheap and flimpsy. The sample pictures on Ricoh’s own website were also of rather poor quality. I put down the new Sony Cybershot as soon as the salesperson told me that the standard battery only has enough juice for 88 shots.
If mum had not named the camera she wanted I might have gone for the Casio. The Canon S50 has too many buttons and features that would confuse her. OTOH she has seen the pictures of the S50 and she likes them (to be honest I also think that the picture quality of the S50 is excellent) so I am not going to get something she might not like.
A colleague of mind got a cheap HP colour printer in the firm’s Xmas party lucky draw, and plugged it into her work computer the other day. She printed out a few photos taken by her Sony Cybershot (a reasonably good one at 4-5MP I think) on A4 paper. She said she wanted to use the paper fully, so the printouts came out all distorted, and our lovely female secretaries all have very round faces in those pictures. The pictures looked very “plastic” and video-like, and were just not very pleasant at all to me. The Lady’s 4-in-1 does pretty respectable photos so I think the Sony Cybershot is the lemon.