Advice on Digital Camera......

[PSU2Fan]

I agree with Dunbar on the C-3030, it is not Olympus' best camera, and that's why it's always good to do your research on cameras before buying... And try them out yourself..

I almost forgot! Silly me. When figuring in your spending limit, plan on figuring in rechargable batteries and a charger. Digital cameras, even the least power hungry ones burn through batteries faster than chilli burns through us! They aren't too expensive, you can get a NIMH charger and batteries for between 20 and 40 dollars.

My good friend owns this one
http://imaging-resource.pricegrabber...a976da385a9b96
If you get the docking station, it includes batteries and a charger.

That canon is a good camera too IMO. THe cheapest prices are obviously refurbs. I personally have never had a problem with any of my refurb items (including the D-510). It all depends on what you're comfortable with. Some people have no probs, others have every problem imaginable, like my flatmate....

ReturnBuy.com is celebrating the grandopening of their newly revamped website with free shipping and a free 1 year kemper warranty on most products.
http://buy.returnbuy.com/store/contr...OLYMPUS&list=Y
The last two cameras on the page are close to your price range, worth a look. The D-550 is very highly rated, though maybe a bit too pricey after you get rechargables. The D-520 is the next gen of the D-510 (my camera) and is more compact. Only drawback is that you can't manually change ISO settings (or whitebalance??). The whitebalance isn't an issue as Olympus auto setting is very accurate. Too bad about the iso setting. Search through the forums for either D-520 or D520, I talked to someone else that had the camera and liked it, even helped me with mine.

[PSU2Fan]

Originally posted by Dunbar
The FinePix 2600z does include an optical viewfinder, but the Optical Viewfinders I have used (on the Fuji Finepix 2600Z and the Olympus C3030Zoom) do not frame the shot exactly as the image lens will take the shot. This has caused me to take a few bad shots because one side of the shot was actually cropped in the file, but looked fine in the viewfinder. The LCD display on both those cameras have backlights and are clearly showing the shot you will get - use the LCD display to frame the shot.

I agree that the optical viewfinder has its drawbacks, and I should have stated that fact. Most cameras with optical viewfinders frame 85-90% of the captured area (those are the good ones!). Not great, but not horrible. LCD and EVF (essentially the same thing) frame almost always 95-98% of the capturable image.

My only beef with evf and lcd screens is that under lowlight or outside at night, you really can't frame your picture. My mother recently bought a Fuji with an EVF (I thought it was the 2600, but it must have been another model as you claim it to have optical) and brought it to my cousins wedding. It was definitely a low light setting, though not dark by any means. It was very hard to frame people in the photos, I had to basically use shadow outlines to get the job done. I hate to think of how hard they are to frame outside at night.

There's definitely room for much improvement in the optical viewfinders' framing, but I prefer it over the alternative. At least with an optical viewfinder you have the option of using the viewfinder or the lcd screen (in some cases I use both).