Pocket-sized camera recommendations

[mattthr]

Hi,

I read the sticky :) I thought I'd just answer the questions therein to give you the required information to help me make my choice:

Budget : Anything up to £300

Size : Pocket sized

How many megapixels will suffice for you? : 6

What optical zoom will you need? : At least 3x but higher would be a big bonus.

How important is “image quality” to you? (Rate using a scale of 1-10) : 9

Do you care for manual controls? : A bonus, but not terribly important

What will you generally use the camera for? : Everyday/holiday usage

Will you be making big prints of your photos or not? : No

Will you be shooting a lot of indoor photos or low light photos? : Reasonably often

Will you be shooting sports and/or action photos? : Rarely

In addition, the big, big annoyance I've always had with digital cameras is the delay between pressing the button and getting a photo. I realise that some delay is inevitable without a professional-grade camera but I'd like this delay to be absolutely minimal whether the cause is shutter lag, or focussing, or whatever. Most of the photos I take are either of wildlife or children which, while not "action shots" do tend to require to you get a fairly instantaneous response from your camera when you press the button. This is such an important requirement that I'd consider buying something bigger than "pocket-sized" if I can get a big improvement in response time.

Are there particular models you already have in mind? :
Sony DSC T-200 (Ticks all the boxes, but fiddly controls are offputting and the gimmicky smile-photo and stupidly large LCD are of no interest to me)
Canon IXUS 75 (Looks good, but that all-important shutter/focus speed is merely "average")

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Cheers,
Matt

[Callistra]

I think all things considered you're asking a bit too much.. especially with shutter lag. Plus you're going to sacrifice image quality with the tiny cameras. That's just all there is too it. Low-light performance being the first thing to go.

That being said, I would take a look at the SD950 IS. But I can tell you from experience the flash doesn't go very far. They have a little flash which screws into the tripod mount at the bottom but I've not had any experience with it myself.

This camera would be much better than the T-200 from Sony. I've messed with so many pocket sized Sony.. The W55 is decent and the P150 was a gem in its time but I'd take the Canon over both.

[AndyfromVA]

I concur with the Canon sd950IS (also known as the Ixus 960IS). For substantially less, you can get the SD850IS (also known as the Ixus 950IS), which is substantially the same except it has 8 pixels instead of 12. Either would be better than the Ixus 75, which does not have optical image stabilization.

I would take the Canons over the Sony.

[tarajohnson61]

I currently have the Sony T-100 and I also had the one before it. I actually loved both cameras I like the features off the 100 but I liked the controls and stuff better on the other one. I love this camera it's small and I personally think it takes good pics for everday use. And it's faster than most I've had.