Looking for a bit of advice

PhoenixRising

Hi Guys,

First time posting here, so go easy on me please.:)

Looking for some advice/opinions on digital cameras. I'm buying my first decent digital camera and I should say at this point that I know nothing about cameras. I want to get a good quality camera but I don't need lots of advanced features although some would be nice. Being able to shoot unlimited (limited by memory card) movies is a bonus. It will just be used for taking occasional shots and needs to be reasonably compact and easy to travel with. My budget is around €350. I've done a bit of research and narrowed it down to these three and I'd appreciate any advice you'd have on which one to go for.

Canon IXUS 55

Sony Cybershot DSC-P200

Canon Powershot A610

Although I think the last one may be a bit on the big side for what I want.

Anyway, any advice would be much appreciated or even any alternatives worth considering.

Thanks.

Thirdfox

try the website www.dpreview.com it's a really comprehensive guide to digital cameras

(in fact they just published a review of the Canon IXUS 55!)

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/CanonSD450/

fletch

Right I'm a bit biased since I have the Ixus 55 (IXY 60)....I got mine for about €320 from ebay with a 512MB SD card, spare battery and a case.
Since I got the camera I can't fault it. If you just want a point-n-shoot camera, it more than does the job. But if you also want somethin with a bit more of manual control, then it can do that too....you can manually control stuff like shutter speed, ISO, white balance etc...
The battery life is excellent considering it has a massive screen on the back and you can take videos limited only by the size of the card...the vids are at 32 FPS (frames per second), however you can also take smaller resolution ones at 60fps! (a normal tv only displays 25fps)
Picture quality is excellent and best of all it's small enough to fit in your pocket....can't really go wrong if you buy it
Oh another kool feature, if you are viewing the pictures and you turn the camera on it's side, the pictures also rotates

Thirdfox

Sony tend to overprocess the images so that it looks good for the average consumer (e.g. vibrant colours etc.). But if you want realistic pictures that you can process on your computer yourself later on then maybe the Canons would be better choices.

PhoenixRising

That's great guys, thanks for the replies.
That was a really detailed review on dpreview!

Decisions, decisions, but I think I'm leaning towards the IXUS 55.

Pet

I have the Canon Ixus 40 (the older version of the 55, obviously), which is about 3 years old at this stage, and it's still a fantastic camera. It was way ahead of its time, it's really compact and the manual features are great. It takes brilliant pictures as a point-and-shoot too though, the automatic mode is excellent. Go for the Ixus 55, it's a great camera.

Thirdfox

I love my Konica Minolta G530 (it's a year old now but the feature set is great and it would definitely be cheap now...)

It even takes both SD and MS cards!