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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. 

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. 

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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. 

The Lumix MDC-FX07 is a worthy competitor in the entry-level 7-megapixel class. While offering loads of user friendly exposure options, speedy shooting performance, and a quality Movie mode, I was a bit surprised at the noise levels in our photos. However, I still feel this holds a good value with the price tag of US$279, just be sure to compare some similar models before making the final decision.