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“The Canon SD1100 is physically attractive, but its images aren’t always as beautiful. Images look good when taken in bright light with the ISO set low, but images taken with high ISO settings are noisy and can look somewhat unpleasant. They are hardly suitable even in low-resolution formats for blogs and e-mails – much less for prints that will sit in an album for years to come.

The $249 price tag is inexpensive for a trendy 8-megapixel Canon digital camera, let alone one that has an optical image stabilization system. But the image quality is the big trade-off here; in anything other than bright lighting, you get images that have a serious amount of noise. Whether the portability of the camera is an acceptable trade-off for this is up to you, but it does detract from the attractiveness of the camera.”

“The Casio EX-F1 is the hottest digital camera at CES. The 60 fps Burst mode is enough to make any photographer lust after this camera. And many consumers search for the perfect camera to carry in place of hauling around a digital camera and camcorder. The EX-F1 just might be that camera. The 6-megapixel camera will reach a wide market with its 12x ultra-zoom functionality and serious camcorder-like high-definition and high-speed Movie mode…”

“The Nikon Coolpix S510 makes a rather unexciting entrance into an already dense market of similar cameras with 3x optical zoom lenses and small portable bodies. The Coolpix S510 has some noteworthy qualities, including optical image stabilization and an innovative rotary dial for easy menu navigation and playback. In general, though, the camera has a bland feature set. The S510’s image performance isn’t terrible, but it isn’t great, either. While the Coolpix point-and-shoot has accurate white balance, a quick startup time, and low noise levels at low ISO speeds, it suffers from extremely high noise levels and poor dynamic range at higher ISO speeds, poor low light performance, and disappointing resolution. Simply put, the Nikon Coolpix S510 does not have much to set it apart from the slew of similar point-and-shoots available on the market. If you’ll settle for a mediocre camera, consider the S510. Otherwise, you may want to look elsewhere.”

“The EOS 40D stands as a solid successor to Canon’s popular EOS 30D. It offers increased resolution, 30 percent faster continuous shooting, and enhanced computing power. A number of innovations, such as sRAW files, Live Preview, automatic dust reduction, and additional weather seals, also make their first appearance in the series, collectively creating a more dynamic and contemporized feature set. In terms of image quality, the 40D’s photos look great, but not significantly better than the 30D’s. The 40D’s noise levels are very low, though not any lower than the 30D. The 40D’s dynamic range is excellent, and slightly improves on the 30D. Color accuracy is almost identical, but the 40D’s resolution is less than impressive, even with the extra megapixels.”

This is great for portraits, and it keeps faces properly exposed. The new camera also has IrSimple technology for wirelessly communicating with other enabled devices. The techy digital camera comes as a jazzed up version of the F30. Fujifilm’s F30 was a good thing, and it is made better in the F31fd. The combination of cool technology, manual control, and all-around easy functionality makes the Fujifilm FinePix F31fd a standout digital camera.

Announced at the beginning of August and available in September 2006, the Casio Exilim EX-Z700 comes to the market with 7.2 megapixels and all the typical bells and whistles of a Casio camera. It is skinny with a 3x telescoping optical zoom lens on the front and a 2.7-inch LCD screen on the back. This camera adds two more scene modes to the already extensive list for a total of 37 Best Shot modes. The middle-tier Casio Z700 will retail for $299 and is offered in blue, silver, and gray…