i don't know much about digital cameras but i want to pick a good one...HELP!?

People so often ask: "Which one is a good camera to buy?"

Here is my 10 cents on the subject:

Point & Shoot cameras are wonderfully handy because of their small size.

When light conditions are ideal, they even take really nice photos - all of them do.

However, they all DO have limitations - they don't do very well in low light situations (i.e. noisy photos, hard to avoid blur, etc). The little onboard flash is very harsh at close range, and doesn't reach very far.

Many of them have no manual functions, so you are limited to only very basic photos, you can't compensate for unusual situations, or do many fun "tricks" and special effects.

P&S's also suffer from frustrating shutterlag and many of them chew through batteries rather quickly.

However, if you're ok with all those limitations, then go ahead and pick one, most of them (the same type and same price range) are rather similar. Personally I would pick either a Canon or a Nikon, and would certainly stay away from Kodak.

A higher end P&S will give you more manual options and better quality. Many of those even give you the option of adding a proper flash (which makes a big difference to your flash photos).

Don't worry too much about megapixels…. there is a limit to how many pixels you can squash into a tiny P&S sensor before you actually LOSE quality rather than gain it.

Don't worry about digital zoom, in fact, don't EVER use it. It simply crops away pixels , i.e. destroys information. The only real zoom is optical.

Decide which features are important to you, and look for cameras that have that feature.

Then go compare a few models on www.dpreview.com .

The very best thing you can do for your success is to borrow some books and learn about basic photography. A bit of knowledge will make a much bigger difference to your photos than your choice of P&S camera can.

For what it's worth - if I was in the market for a P&S camera right now, my choice would be a Canon Powershot SX10 IS http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=M...

About the color accent option: it seems to be a current fad that people are getting excited about.

The camera keeps one color and turns everything else black and white.

I would never use such a feature for the following reasons:

• You are very limited in what you can do.

• The function isn't always reliable or accurate. The camera's idea of "red" might be different to yours. It will often include/exclude areas that don't want to be included/excluded.

• What if you just happened to take your best photo ever, but instead of having a real color photo, you only have some partial b&w thing that might look totally awful. You'd kick yourself.

• If you do the "Selective or Partial Desaturation" (as it is called correctly) in post processing, you have much more control over it, and will get a way better result. Plus you can keep your original color version, too.

This also applies to any color effects done in camera like b&w or sepia - you're better off NOT to.

If you don't have your own image editor, you can go to www.picnik.com and use their effects menu which makes it very easy.

Mega pixs are basically the quality of the pic. The higher the number, the better the pic. At the very minimum, you want it to be 8mp. Which is the shortened term for 8 mega pixels. Qvc usually has good online sales on good quality ditigal cameras, I would go online and check it out. Also, after looking over info on 3 or 4 you like the sound, look and price of, do a quick google search on each using the brand name and then type in 'product review' after it. The more people who own it, the more people will have opinions on it. And if you can't find anything, take it as a big fat buying no-no and move on to the next.....Good Luck this holiday season, happy shopping.

I think the perfect camera for you would be the SONY DSC H9, I had one prior to my dslr and I loved it. It has 9 mega pixels and a 15x zoom. It has a variety of shooting modes including mpeg* which will allow you to shoot movies. The only thing that it doesn't have is a pink color.