I've looked at the sticky above and researched quite a few sites (Steve's digicams, DP review and a few others) and choices are quite overhelming to say the least. Ideally after looking at the sticky I'd love to go for a "prosumer" camera, however, my biggest problem here is the budget, which is £200. Also my parents might want to use the camera occasionally for my sister's birthday or something so getting an overly complicated camera wouldn't be a good idea (not that you can for £200).
Still after a few hours of looking around the net and review sites I manged to find some contenders. First one is the KODAK Z740. It's around £150 and looks quite good for it's price tag. It's in a SLR style body with a massive x10 optical zoom and a respectable 5MP picture quality (however, wasn't too impressed with this shot, also considering the picture that the other "contender" took). This camera also offers a range of manual features as well as an auto mode for easy point and click pictures which would be perfect for my parents or just taking pictures at some occasion. Only downside I can see is that I'm not very fond of the plastic like look, but the shape is good. Minor annoyance that Steve digicams mentioned is the flash that pops up every time when you start up the camera.
Another camera I found is Fuji Finepix S7000. I managed to track one down for £183 (refurbished) and £200 for brand new. This one has 6MP quality but a smaller optical zoom at X6. The picture quality seems quite good (here is the pic of the same location as Z740 but looks a lot more impressive), however, a few sites mentioned there's too much noise in some pictures and a lack of options in terms of compression. Also mentiones the 12MP mode is quite poor unless it's RAW but that eats up a lot of space at around 12-14 mb per shot. I noticed this camera takes 4xAA batteries and has quite a poor battery life considering most newer cameras can go for as long with 2xAA. Another problem is that this is slightly over my budget as my budget of £200 was suppose to include the price of memory card too, but is this camera really worth is over the KODAK Z740? Other suggestions welcome.
Still after a few hours of looking around the net and review sites I manged to find some contenders. First one is the KODAK Z740. It's around £150 and looks quite good for it's price tag. It's in a SLR style body with a massive x10 optical zoom and a respectable 5MP picture quality (however, wasn't too impressed with this shot, also considering the picture that the other "contender" took). This camera also offers a range of manual features as well as an auto mode for easy point and click pictures which would be perfect for my parents or just taking pictures at some occasion. Only downside I can see is that I'm not very fond of the plastic like look, but the shape is good. Minor annoyance that Steve digicams mentioned is the flash that pops up every time when you start up the camera.
Another camera I found is Fuji Finepix S7000. I managed to track one down for £183 (refurbished) and £200 for brand new. This one has 6MP quality but a smaller optical zoom at X6. The picture quality seems quite good (here is the pic of the same location as Z740 but looks a lot more impressive), however, a few sites mentioned there's too much noise in some pictures and a lack of options in terms of compression. Also mentiones the 12MP mode is quite poor unless it's RAW but that eats up a lot of space at around 12-14 mb per shot. I noticed this camera takes 4xAA batteries and has quite a poor battery life considering most newer cameras can go for as long with 2xAA. Another problem is that this is slightly over my budget as my budget of £200 was suppose to include the price of memory card too, but is this camera really worth is over the KODAK Z740? Other suggestions welcome.