HWT Christmas Gift Guide

When I first started seeing people snapping pictures with small digital cameras I was skeptical. How good could those pictures be anyway? What I had seen of the pictures they took did not overly impress me. But that was back in the days when the cameras were in the neighborhood of 1 megapixel.

Then I saw a friend's 5.0 megapixel camera and was very impressed with the quality of the photographs it took. Not only did they look great but they didn't need to be developed and they could be uploaded directly to the 'net. AND you didn't need to buy film.

I bought a 5.1 megapixel camera and never looked back. I like my Cannon .35 MM. I like handling film and I like all the things you can do with a quality SLR. But I find myself using it less and less as the sheer convience of the digital becomes addictive.

Now cameras that have better picture quality are coming on the market and are becoming affordable. Like this one:

Olympus Stylus 740 7.1MP Digital Camera with Digital Image Stabilized 5x Optical Zoom

This has an MSRP of $349.95 but Amazon.com has them for $257.87.

If this is too rich for your blood then consider this:

Canon PowerShot A550 7.1MP Digital Camera with 4x Optical Zoom

This has an MSRP of $249.99 but Amazon.com has them for $131.00. 7.1 megapixel produces a very good picture. My camera is a 5.1 and regular readers of this blog have seen dozens of pictures taken with it.