There isn't a "best" digital camera. My son bought a tiny Nikon with 3x zoom for about $100 and it meets his needs very well. It all depends on what you want to do.

I adore my Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5, but it has some shortcomings. Maybe if I talk about the features that work for me and those that don't, it will be useful to other people in deciding what is important to them. Hope this isn't too much detail.

First, here are the reasons I bought it, and some things that make it a great camera for my purposes.

* It has 12X optic zoom, plus another 8x or so of excellent digital zoom. The great magnification let me take a clear photo, late in the afternoon, of a hummingbird who just finished driking nectar; you can see that her tongue is still being withdrawn into her bill. (!)

* It's VERY small and light weight for its capacity. I take it lots more places than our old digicam.

* It has a very fast recovery from the power save and a very fast "shutter" response time for a camera in its price range. I get the picture I was aiming at, not one taken 1/4 second later when the smile or the bird has gone away.

* It provides a choice of programmed, aperture priority, shutter priority, manual, or several simplified/idiot-proof exposure and focusing modes. I haven't really looked at the idiot-proof modes. The shutter priority really improved clarity with bird pics because the little critters move so darned fast. I thought my pics were out of focus but it was motion that was blurring them.

* It shows excellent on-screen review of your pics, with a good zoom that lets you see any part of the picture up to 8 or 16x.

* I got a full GB on my SanDisk memory card, which is lovely. I took about 500 pics of the hummingbirds, at about 1.5 MB each, and still had plenty of room.

* Good image stabilizer, good repeat function -- for example the repeat mode let me get a whole sequence of pics of two hummingbirds having a confrontation.

There are lots of other goodies that I am discovering but also there are things I don't care for.

FIRST, there's no purely manual focus. I can hit a button and say, FOCUS here, but the autofocus can still screw it up if I'm shooting through a window. I think you have to have some clear verticals or horizontals in the subject before it can focus, but that may be standard. If you mostly want flash pictures, or will be taking pics of people, this may not matter at all.

SECOND, it is very grainy at ISO/ASA 400, i.e. in low light. That isn't a big problem for me because I'm just trying to get source materials for my woodburned art. But if you are looking for high quality prints it may not work for you.

THIRD, this may just be a result of my photographing birds and other wildlife, which tend to come around in twilight, but very few of my photos are as sharp and crisp as I would like them to be. I have seen Nikon photos in similar lighting that seem to me to have much better contrast and sharpness. I admit though that I've gotten nice results on the rare occasions when I'm NOT shooting through a window and AM shooting in full sun.

FOURTH, it does NOT have a good macro capability IMO. At the wide angle lens setting I can get up to a foot away, I believe. There is also a "macro zoom" at 12X such that I can shoot from 3 to 6 feet away from the subject. I can live with it but if you're shooting close-ups of small stuff try a different camera. I have heard Olympus recommended for macro functions.

Well I have been itching to show off my photos so I'm thinking maybe I can put up a few samples. They would have to be full sized, though, to show the clarity or lack of it.

I bought my camera in December and it was already on clearance. It is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5. I don't know how the newer ones compare.

JohnB, maybe you could be more specific about which features are useful and which are "techie stuff"?

Rita F