canon powershot a610 or a620. recently introduced... the pictures that are coming out of them are fantastic.

I started with an A60 (which was a great camera), and when my daughter broke that, moved up to the A510, which I haven't been as happy with (mainly because it dropped from 4 batteries to 2, making flash recycle times unbearable).

waiting for the A610 review on dpreview.com...

<edit> my favorite thing though, about the canon point and shoots, is that the full manual controls mean that if you feel like getting serious about photography, or just try out some different settings, you can do that - plenty of room to grow. at the same time, if you just want a camera you can turn on and have it work, it does that great too...

Completely agreed. My Canon A75 has full manual controls (though I'd rather turning a dial than pushing buttons), but I usually set it to Program AE mode, "P" - which is basically Auto, but has a few extra fine-tune controls over the regular Auto mode.

But I'd give my uh... certain body part to have a Canon or Nikon digital SLR camera. I promised myself I wouldn't touch my leftover scholarship money for non-school purposes But I must say, in terms of image quality and sharpness, my A75 (or any other point and shoot, for that matter) totally does NOT compare to a digital SLR. I have some neat photos that would be even neater if the image quality was better.

I do find that other brands of digital camera don't quite have the same manual controls.

yeah, a dslr would be nice, but I've decided that despite the great image quality, I realllllly like live previews on my LCD, and the ability to shoot movies. guess I'll never be a 'true' photographer, but I've decided I'm okay with that

DSLRs have LCD screens too...

Good info guys! Thanks

Took this pic last year(drool) with my Canon 10D.

Yea, but they don't show you the pic till after you take it. Well, at least that'* how it is on the Canons.

Really? Well, thats silly. Well, maybe not. Its really nice to see the pic to know if it is good or not.

The point of the SLR camera is to use the viewfinder, cause you see exactly what the lens sees.

ayup. I prefer using the viewfinder.