First I thought I wanted the Casio Exilim EX-Z10 because it takes AA batteries, has a few nice manual modes I could play around with and is really quite cheap...I thought it was the perfect camera for me...

But then I got a strong impression from reviews that Casio cameras break easily and seem to have a lot of problems...and Casio aren't good at solving them...bummer

So I looked around a bit more and found the Kodak Easyshare V550 which is smaller and faster but doesn't take AA batteries and is more expensive...

I also looked at the Pentax Optio S60 and Canon PowerShot SD300 which looked great but the S60 is quite expensive and didn't have a lot of reviews I could look at, and the SD300 doesn't take AA batteries which is a shame...

So basically, I'm looking for something like the Casio but not.

Important things to me:
- Cost (between £100 and £200 would be great...thats around $200-350)
- Batteries - AA batteries are cheap and easy to get from anywhere
- Size - I'm looking for something quite small that I can carry around with me easily
- Picture quality is really important, grainy pictures upset me
- Also I want a camera that is one notch up from beginner so has a few manual settings I can play around with...

...is that too much to ask? Yes I know I'm hard to please but I want this camera to last for a while so I have to love it.

Because you are quoting prices in what appear to be English Pounds, I am assuming that you reside in the UK. The AA battery requirement limits the choice available considerably. The AA battery requirement also increases the overall camera size.

Digital cameras that come to mind are the Olympus C-5500, the new Fuji S-5600, the new Canon A-620,the Olympus SP-310 and SP-350. I hope that helps.

MT

I will check those cameras out, thank you very much for your help

Have a look at the Sony DSC-W5. I got it a few months ago and I am very pleased with the results I have got from it. I take alot of pictures at athletics events and the camera has an extreemly short shutter lag and it is very fast at writing to the meory card between shots. I think you can get it for around £170 now. It also has a 2.5inch LCD screen which is good even in sunlight.

Wow, thank you so much for replying...I hadn't seen that camera at all yet but it looks perfect. It's quite fat but as MT said, it's a compromise you gotta make for AA batteries.

When you connect the camera to your computer can you transfer photos directly (like through my computer) or do you have to go through some software thing...

:?Thanks again!

For a paltry sum you can purchase a chip reader and download much faster with complete confidence.

MT

:-)Ooh, I so didn't know these things existed...yay that's so handy, beacuse at the moment I download pictures from my parent's digital cameras for them and it takes ages cause my dad's has to go through a really old version of Olympus Camedia Master which takes forever and almost always crashes the computer! Awsome...thanks!