Suggest me a compact for the missus...

[Deluded]

Hello you lot.

The Missus' Birthday is looming and she has told me she wants a new camera. She currently has a Samsung digimax6i or something but the battery is knackered and only stays on for 1 min at full charge. It's a good camera and very good quality for what it is.

Budget is between £100 - £200 with the aim to get it as near to the bottom end as possible, but will spend extra for quality.

Quality is the key here. It's a major thing for me and I wont settle for crap, soft, noisy images, even if it is just a point and shoot compact for the Missus. I'll still be using it so I want it to be half decent.

I have been looking at all sorts of compact from some of the major players but am being very let down by many of the samples I have seen. Noisy in anything over 200ISO, soft or no detail when viewing images at 100%, halos around objects, blowouts in the highs and lack of detail in shadows etc.

All of these cameras seem to have stupid, necessary features as their main selling points. Auto face recognition, extra screens built into the front, 50x digital zoom etc. All crap that wont be used and I don't see why I should pay a premium for that feature and compromise on quality.

What I want is a Digital compact with around 10mp, no silly features, just simple camera that takes photos with very good quality, good dynamic range and low noise for around £100-£200.

Any brand is considered, would prefer a camera brand rather than electronic brand, Olympus, Nikon, Canon etc. Although looking at some of the samples, the Samsungs seem to be best for quality in this price bracket.

Any help appreciated!

Cheers!

[oobster]

Not a great help but i've just bought a Nikon Coolpix S4000 as I don't want to take the DSLR on holiday.

I've only taken around 18 pictures so far but it seems to be quite impressive. 4x Optical Zoom, nice big (3") touch-screen LCD on the back, 12MP, £119 from Jessops. Takes 720P movies too.

I've got a 8GB SDHC card in it and it can take just a shade over 1000 pics at the best quality setting.

[Dogsey]

You can have decent or you can have cheap, but you're unlikely to get both.

[jt racing]

The panasonic fs12 is tasty with a lovely leica lens. Very good and reliable. The Canon ixus 110 or above are good too.
My money and is the panasonic though. We sell a lot of them and never have a days bother, and it really does give a nice sharp image.

[Deluded]

Have been looking at the Panasonics and am impressed by some of the results, especially compared to a number of other brands.

[chr15b]

have had the Panasonic tz1, tz5 and currently tz7 - excellent travel cameras. full of features and light.