P&S recommendation...under $250

sonny_c

My brother-in-law is looking for a P&S camera. He recently bought a motorcycle and wants a camera to document his trips. He's looking for great build quality, something built to last yet portable enough to stick in his pocket.

He doesn't know squat about photography, so he needs something easy to use. Some features that would be nice but not required:

• 4-5x Optical zoom
• one with image stabilization
• face detection
• good video quality

Tee Why

Ken Rockwell has given a nice review of the Canon SD 880IS. You may want to check it out. (I"m not a big fan of Ken, but he seems spot on about this camera to me.)

http://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/compacts/sd880.htm

Grainbelt

We hash this over constantly at ADVrider.com, Baldy's other site. I'll throw in my CDN 0.02

If size is of huge importance, hard to beat the SD880IS. For landscapes, the 28mm wide end is nice. I'm also a huge fan of the Panasonic Lumix FX series, really any of them would work. The TZ5 might be in that price range, and is the smallest 10x zoom camera I've seen. The Lumix FX and TZ are all 28mm on the wide end.

For rugged cameras, the Olympus and Pentax sell shock-and-water-proof models, both available at that price point.

The universal motorcycle adventure cameras are the Canon Powershot A-series. AA batteries you can pick up anywhere on the road, manual controls, decent zoom range, and I think most have an optical viewfinder. They are also cheap, at about $150 for the mid-range model. Downside is the 36mm equivalent starting point.


That about covers it, I think.