Fuji Finepix F710

I actually bought this camera on a whim whilst on holiday in Japan... it seemed like pure madness at the time but I wasn't disappointed.

It's my first digital camera so I may not be in a good position to compare it to other similar cameras... However IMO image quality is excellent - colour range, sharpness and so on are all great. Only complaints in this respect is that there's a hint of purple fringing when an image contains strong light/dark contrast - I believe this is a common problem with digitals - and reds can appear a touch too strong.

The full manual mode is fantastic and apparently isn't common on digitals at this level - if you know your photography this is a key feature; if not there's a whole range of automatic settings.

The video mode is an added bonus - good quality in both normal and widescreen and 2 size settings - though you can't zoom in and out in video mode...

The design and feel of the camera is solid and it fits nicely in the hand with all crucial buttons available even when held one-handed.

The software may be a little niggly - but all I'm worried about is getting the images onto my PC - and that's no problem using windows explorer - it just pops up as another drive on the PC.

One possible complaint is that whilst you can choose between a range of image sizes (1mp up to 6Mp) there's no choice of compression settings... If you're not happy with the jpegs it produces there's nothing much you can do about it except shoot in RAW mode.

All in all I'd say this is an excellent camera. Though it's not a true 6Mp - the image quality is great; it has an excellent range of features; is easy to use without limiting the advanced user; is a good size; well built and just looks great... and it's exceptionally quick!