Hi, gang. This is my first visit to the Still zone. I'm on the look out for the better $300 digital camera, on behalf of some friends. I have never even considered buying a digicam before. What's good? Thanks very much.

Shawn

A friend of mine told me that B&H has the Canon G1 for $250. I bought one three years ago for $800 on sale. It's a good camera for under $300. It's a little more advanced than most cameras in that price range. It has a flash hot shoe, manual controls and a swiveling LCD screen. It is a little bulky campared to newer 3MP cameras. Just depends on what you are looking for.

$250 is a great price for a Canon G1, however that camera is somewhat older and lacks the DIGIC image processor which is now current equipment on all recent Canon models. The DIGIC chip makes an enormous difference in image quality, battery life, shutter response and other factors. For $300 I'd recommend the new Canon PowerShot A75 (http://www.powershot.com/powershot2/a75/index.html), or last year's A70. These are actually very similar to the G1 except they are not equipped with a swivel LCD or a hotshoe for external flash. Hope this helps,