[daacon]

Thanks for the comments. No purchase yet.

Another thought is that I love bass fishing and sometimes my work sees me out on the many lakes and rivers in this area. I just refuse to bring my *ist DS for fear of getting it dunked. In the very first post I was looking for a camera to withstand nasty weather but along the way my thoughts have strayed a bit. If it came down to buying a weatherproof P&S camera there are few choices; either the Olympus 770SW or the Pentax W30. As far as I know there are no others in this niche market.

Numerous PS have waterproof casings that from the specs will even allow you take the camera underwater up to 5 - 10 feet I think. These are usaully rather expensive mind you and sometimes come close to the camera cost. I have no eperience with any of these , but food for thought anyway.

[Mr Hyde]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I didn't necessarily ask for a compact P&S as Deni pointed out. I am a big man with big mitts; the tiny credit card sized cameras may take nice pictures but I am afraid I'll fumble it or crush it or something worse. That said, the Fuji 6000 is a bit too large for what I had in mind. It is not far off the size of the *ist DS I already own. The Canon A630 and A640 seem like a decent size to me.

Keep 'em coming; I am reading up on each suggestion and have not made a decision yet.

I'm 6-2 and weigh about 225. I have a Canon SD800IS and have no trouble using it. I think the little thing takes great photos. And its so small that you'll have no excuse not to bring it with you just about everywhere you go. I keep it in a small case and just toss it in my pocket. The case also has a belt loop if I'm not wearing a jacket.

[fevbusch]

I suggest the Canon S2is. It is a wonderful camera. I had a tough time switching to my pentax K100d. That's how good the S2is is. It won't fit in your pocket but is light in weight, has image stabilization, 10x zoom and runs on 4 AA batteries. You will love it. Freddy

[aabram]

For really-really cheap P&S which is not compact but is actually nice to hold, look for Fuji S5200. It's smaller than S6000 and lot lighter. IMHO it has been one of most undervalued cameras ever. It's old model but still kicking hard. I've had ISO800 shots from that camera published with no problems.

I'd reiterate what others have said - when you want good high-ISO performance, Fuji compacts (F-series) are basically the only way to go. When you're shooting in broad daylight all the time then it doesn't really matter which compact you pick, they're all more or less adequate at their lowest ISO setting.

[aabram]

The Olympus 770SW is rated simply the best bad weather and sturdy P&S digi - bar none. But the bad side is that it takes just average pictures and lousy movies at 15 FPS. I am not a diver but the ruggedness does appeal to me.

Okay, I have played with Oly 770SW lately for testing purposes. It's image quality is nothing to write home about, typical noisy compact pictures. Those pictures are mostly for recognising faces and places, not for putting up in the gallery. You can't control aperture or shutter, you either have to set it on automatic or try to figure out which of its 24 (or something) scene modes will have desired combination.

It's not exactly comfortable to hold, the body is all slippery metal and there are no rubber bands or notches to help the grip. Macro focusing is slow and pretty much is constant hit and miss as soon as there are distracting objects in the background.

However, it really is waterproof and shock/drop resistant. I tossed it around the beach and washed it up in the sea, took underwater pics, turned it on and off in the water, shook it to dry etc etc. It just kept working and taking pictures. I left it running on movie mode in the refrigerator and half an hour later it was still faithfully recording without a hitch. I'm not exactly a light guy and it survived me stepping on it. I was sitting in the rain in the harbour and snapped happily while I probably would've been hesitant to do the same with regular cam.

So yea, in that sense it is outdoor camera. You can drop it from the boat and pick up later on and it'll still be working. It's graded for 10m underwater depth and it's probably the limit since while it's seals are rubberised, they don't exactly have industrial strenght look. But still, it seems to survive a lot.

Having noisy camera in situations where you normally wouldn't have any camera at all may offset some of its limitations, depending on your needs.

[Lowell Goudge]

everyone needs to see this discussion thread as the topics overlap quite a bit

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-p-s-camera-discussion/4783-whats-y...-s-camera.html

[mattdm]

I was looking at the F20 too as it is within my price range and quite impressed with the high ISO performance. However the lack of manual exposure control, and to a lesser degree, use of XD card and lithium batt, deter me from that option. I would look at the F40 though as it can use SD card and has a bigger sensor (1/1.6").

More pixels packed on the sensor though, so overall it turns out to be less sensitive in low light, unfortunately.

I also wouldn't get too hung up on manual exposure control on a compact camera. Bear in mind that you can still do EV adjustments (-2 to +2 in 1/3 steps), and that with the small sensor, there's not much visible difference in depth of field due to aperture changes, so you pretty much always want the largest aperture you can get, and then by choosing the ISO (or auto-iso range) you effectively control your shutter speed range.

xD cards suck, but when you consider the F20 can be found for $150, $30 more for an xD card still makes a bargain.