5punk

Word bitches!

Looking for a small, £50-£150, shiny digital point and click digital camera jobbie for the missus. She's not a fan of technology other than when it's super easy to use, so fancy doodads that take a bit of rtfm are out, something that's going to deliver pretty good images reliably in random light levels etc is in.

Something like the nikon coolpix s3500 or s6500, Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ9, Canon IXUS 255 HS.

Any and all suggestions or warnings welcome.

I usually go for Samsungs as they offer stupid amounts of megapixels per price, but I'm not a photography geek who cares about Leica lenses or fashion-conscious at all. Samsungs are generally silver and a bit blocky and the basic feature set vis-a-vis fancy stuff like HDR has been pared down in the cheaper models over time, but they take a decent pic in my experience, on Auto it mostly does the job - you should still get good anti-shake/OIS and face/smile-recog on base models.

If it's her first time with a digi-cam, the most useful rule to learn is half-pressing the shutter button and checking the screen for red box/green box.

I know Canon plus a number of other former "proper camera" makers actually use Samsung electronics in their own-branded devices, and since it's the electronics that actually do the picture taking these days, it's worth looking into who supplies whom - you can get a lot more extra features on a traditionally "Electronics-firm" camera for the same price as a big-name "Camera-firm" camera.

The trad-camera firms do tend to tout their superior lenses as the reason for their high selling point, but I guess the value of that depends on whether you're documenting "the catalyst for the fall of western civilisation" or "my cat done a poo lol"