Cheap and good, Canon A530 for under $150.

I love, love, love my Fujifilm FinePix E900.

The controls are fairly intuitive, it fits nicely in the hand, takes great pictures and fun little videos and it runs on plain old AA batteries.

The regular battery thing is a real sticking point for me. If your camera conks out it is no problem to pick up some fairly inexpensive AAs, you can get them anywhere.

For informative reviews go to Digital Camera Resource and Steve's Digicams.

I also highly recommend Beach Camera for purchasing which ever one you get.

Instapundit is running a series of posts on this if I'm not mistaken. Granted, we don't all have evil Glenn's budget to work with.

Colossus, you need to start drinking blended puppies. Not only does it make you richer, you also become famous.

I recommend the Canon A540. You'll want at least ~5 megapixels in whatever camera you get, in case you ever want to print a 5x7 or 8x12 without any appreciable loss of quality. Go for the best "glass" you can get too. I like the A540's quality better than the Sony cybershot I had before it.

If you want to compare the Canon to Sony, check out some real-world applications in my photoblog entries (filed under the "Domestic Bliss" category at my blog; everything before the Caribbean pictures was taken with an old 5MP Sony or 1MP Sony video camera, everything after with the Canon).

Correction: The in-the-water Stingray photos were taken either with a Fuji waterproof film camera or by a professional photographer with a higher-end digital camera. All the other Caribbean photos were taken with the Canon.

Any Fuji Finepix with over 4 MP will do. Best to get one with 3X mechanical zoom (real) and 3 or more X digital zoom. I have been using these for years with fantiastic results. Even better, they are down to 99 bucks for some of the older (but still new) 4 MP models. The older ones are a bit bulkier, but then a heavy item the size of a cigarrette box is not that big to start with. I can send you some nice photos of Chile, Argentina and other places if you want to see the quality, and that at about 1024 X 800 res, I don't use max resolution, otherwise it takes forever to download at friends side.

Mr. keysunset recommends the 6 megapixel Canon PowerShot SD600 bought from Profeel (profeelvideo.com) for $209.75, free shipping. And he says you might want to buy some extra memory for it.

Just got it today and Mr. has been a happy boy playing with his new toy. ;-)

That'll teach me to comment from memory. I looked at our Canon when I got home last night and it's actually the A530, so let me heartily second bill's recommendation (first commenter above).

I have the Canon S3 IS and I love it. It's 6 megapixels and has a 12x's zoom which is longer than most in it's price range. It also has a decent size screen on the back. It's definitely not something you just slip in your pocket. But I wanted the longer zoom since tend to take crazy vacations involving pyramids or gorillas or whatever. One downside is that it requires 4 conventional batteries which it runs through quickly.

I bought a Pentax 100D. My previous body was a Pentax K. I've shot wildlife to weddings with that camera. In terms of film, the K chassis was the best ever made for the man who could work a camera.

The 100D is a work in progress. The depth of color is phenomenal. And, you can shoot it full manual. White balance and your filters become true tools.

It's probably more expensive than most want to spend but, most don't like shooting. But if you love photography it's worth a look.

Oh! I just found a great article about what to look for in a camera that a friend emailed me when I was looking for mine. I can't locate your email address, but if you send it my way, I'm happy to send you the article.