Typical users don't need to go beyond 4 mega pixels. Mega pixels will have no influence on quality. The higher the mega pixels are, the bigger the pictures will be physically. Unless it is your intention to print life size posters of your self ( or is that yourself
), I wouldn't waste my money on anything above 5 mega pixels, but I would be quite happy with 4 mp. Save your money! 4mp will enable you to print decent pictures up to 11X14. If you need anything bigger, I suspect it would be the odd case, and you could get that 11x14 blown up in a print shop or do it yourself with an image editing software. The bigger you go from that point, the less image quality you'll have.
When you look at zoom, there is optical zomm and digital zoom. Ignore the digital zoom number has this essentially fakes a real zoom by mergin pixels into bigger ones, and this in turn diminishes the photo quality. I never use the digital zoom and don't recomend that anyone uses it unless they don't care about photo quality, or are desperate stockers on a budget. Typical optical zooms are usually around 3-4X on most cameras but you can go beyond that too, but then your selection becomes more limited. If zooming is important for you, either go for 10-12x optical zoom, or look for a camera that will allow you to use different lens (which would be purchased seperatly).
Brands: You'll get different opinions on this depending on who you talk too. Here's mine:
Don't get a Kodak. That company is having a hard time and they are layoffing people left and right. Besides, you can get a better quality camera from other brands.
Fujifilm are apparently very good camera's, altough they tend to have a "lemon" model once in a blue moon. Make sure to research the model before you purchase (this applies to any brand). The downside with fujifilms is that they use XD cards for memory and those are usually 30-40% more expensive than compact flash or SD. They are also harder to find because some stores don't even bother to carry them since they are not widely used.
Sony's use a Sony memory stick, which is their own basterdized version of a CF card. Which means you'll pay more per MB than a CF or SD card. Sony camera's are decent. Not the best, not the worse.
Canon is my personal favourite brand. I own one and I'm quite happy with it. What I like about it it the simplicity to use it, and the advance modes that will give you 100% control over how the camera behaves. A lot of camera's do this (fully manual), but always verify what presets come with a camera. The other thing I like about canons is that they generally use AA batteries. I don't like to battery packs that you need to charge every 3 day and that is way over priced when you want to buy a back up battery. I preffer buying rechargable AA batteries. The other thing about AA batteries is that it makes the camera bigger/heavier so it feels like I'm holding a real camera and not some tiny uncomfortable button crammed unit that feels like it's going to cripple in my hands. Finally, most Canons now use SD memory cards which are reliable and cheaper.
Total Members: 4952