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The S6000fd is a very capable prosumer digicam. With its 6.3-megapixel imager, 28-300mm mechanically controlled zoom lens, extensive exposure and in-camera processing controls, automatic and advanced shooting modes, there’s little that you can’t do with this camera. And if you’re looking for a digicam that can also capture high quality video, you’ll enjoy the S6000fd’s VGA resolution 30fps movies—they’re gorgeous, and you can zoom while recording! With an MSRP of $499 and a street price of under $400, the S6000fd is also a terrific value. 

Nikon’s D40 is not only an awesome little dSLR that captures great photos with robust performance, it also has a very pleasing price tag of $600 or less (and remember this is for the body and the lens.) In fact, we bought our D40 from B&H Photo for about $572 shipped! The only annoyances I had with the D40 was that you have to enter the Setup menu to “unlock” the rest of the available settings… That said, I feel this model will make an excellent camera for any user who wants a more versatile camera over their consumer digicam, and don’t feel like breaking the bank in the process. 

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While the Olympus FE-200 has the ability to capture nice photos, includes several user-friendly exposure modes, and offers a 5x optical zoom with a nice wide field of view, shooting performance is comparable to the speed of a snail at full sprint, which really turned us off. I was disapointed to see that there were not more advanced controls offered for novice users, however this model is aimed more toward the complete novice. 

Keeping in line with its Optio S predecessors, the Pentax Optio S7 offers some great features, an easily carried pocket size, an all-metal durable case, all in a 7-megapixel file format. The 23 MB internal memory will only be good for around 10 pictures with the average file size of 2.2MB, so we strongly recommend that you purchase a memory card of at least 256MB. With a street price of US$300 or less (check our buy box below) the S7 gives you a lot of camera for your money. 

While the SP-510 UZ offers good image quality and OK shooting performance, I still feel Olympus needs to revamp their storage media (xD.) Even the new H (High-speed) xD cards, like the one we used for our tests, are extremely slow when compared to he average “fast” SD card sold today… But, with an MSRP of about US$329, I feel it still offers a good value for such a versatile and affordable “super-zoom” model, as long as you don’t need the fastest camera on the market.