I'm gonna use this mostly for downloading to my computer. I may from time to time print them out.

I'm thinking a 3.5 megapixel would print out alright, depending on the paper and printer. Am I right?

Is there a camera out there that also records video as well as sound. Like for making 30 sec clips and such.

My budget is a max of $350-$400.

I need recommendations to start researching.

 

My sister has the Canon Digital Elph which is 2.0 MP. It has video capabilities and pictures come out great. its way below your budget. but I think they sell a 3.2 Elph. Its sleek and compact.

Jason

 

I have a Canon S200. AWESOME camera. They have the S230 (3.2 MP) and the S400 (4 MP). All great choices, great sizes. Pictures come out excellent when printed. Only thing is battery life isn't the best, but what is?

 

Olympus or nikon. Take your pick of their line up. They make great digicams. If I had to choose one over the other I would go with Nikon. Their pro lin is used by countless professionals, and their product is so good other companies like Fuji use Nikon parts and relable it under the Fuji name.

 

I wrote a pretty long reply but S2Ki said I wasn't logged in and the message is gone now. Bloody PHP.

Anyway, basically I mentioned that Canon has an SD100 out now, which shares the Digital Elph body (very small and sleek). However, ittakes SD cards instead of Compact Flash, which comes in handy if you have other devices which uses SD/MMC (Palm/Handspring PDAs, etc etc).

I'm in the process of shopping for a digital camer myself. I was looking at Nikons, Canons and some Olympii (??) and it seems Canon makes the best digital camera, in terms of image quality (their CCD seems to be the best, I think). Nikon is about on par with Canon (depending on which model you get, you may prefer Nikon over Canon). And I found Olympus cameras produce very noisy images (at least with the few cameras that I bothered to look into).

Look here to do your own image quality comparisons:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/MFR1.HTM
(select a manufacturer, model, then click the "test images" link)

 

Nikon 3100 is about $350 - takes AA's which is great in an emergency and cheap for rechargables, plus it uses Compact Flash which is still the cheapest and most stable memory. Its 3.0 megapixel which is good enough for decent 8x10 prints and great 5x7's. Or you can save yourself 100 bucks and get the 2.0 megapixel 2100. Also these cameras are very easy to use.

 

I just purchased my first Digicam too, The Canon Elph S400 with the Best Buy 3 year warranty and a 256meg Card the camera is great and im sure the other cannons in the ELph series would be fine i can records up to 30 mins of Video+Audio now thats cool!!!

 

i got a canon ixus 3.2 , its very cool but pricey , but its in your price range