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I've been taking only digital photos since 1996. The first was a Casio "toy" with only 0.47 mega pixels. Then I moved through the Olympus line from 0.768 up through the line over the years to the new stuff. What I dicovered is that the new machines are all great. It's now a quetion of menus and ease of use according to need. None of them are better than the other. It's weight, ease of use, features, the type of memory you want, battery, end use, etc.
My first big trip was with the Olympus 0.78 mp camera with only an internal memory. I bought a Toshiba 660 laptop to take along to download the maximum 20 pix as needed. Spent 3 weeks in Papua New Guinea, 2 weeks in NZ, 3 weeks in Australia, a week in Easter Island, and some other places. Let me tell you that was a test of patience with a serial port connection and limited battery supply. Now, man, it's a joke. Better than film cameras and now I take along a gigabyte of memory cards to make sure I don't need to take along a laptop. It's wonderful.
I've been hung up on 10X optical zoom minimum, and bought the Lumix 12X for a speceifc need. I'm thinking maybe 4-8X is enough Decide what your goals are, then you can pick the machine. They are all excellent these days. I am looking for a camera with CF memory. I have used cameras with with SD, xD, CF and Smart Media memory. CF you can use for other purposes. Meaning if you can stick to one format you'll save money. The cost of memory can go beyond the cost of the camera. I'd stick wih CF. xD is slow. SD is very popular and the new Extreme SD cards are good. The extreme SD card writes 2X faster than a xD. This can be important if you are doing fast sequence shots in the Arctic. I found that out on my trip to the Antarctic in February.
Batteries. Most high end cameras now come with unique Nixx batteries that charge in 30 mintues. I still like cameras with 4 AA batteries, but that seems to be a thing of the past. Something to think about depending on where you are going.
btw, the worst camera I ever owned was a Kodak. I gave it to my daughter, and recently gave her my Olympus 3030 and am sendin her my 10X Olympus C-740 this week. Stay with the Japanese. Good stuff. They do more test marketing than the Americans, plus they admit mistakes and change technology rigtht away, whereas the Americans, like GWB, just seem to continue on into oblivian not knowing what the score really is.
Good hunting. I'm going after my 15th digital camera right now, wondering what it will be. I have a credit for the sale of my Lumix It was the best camera I ever owned, but was too heavy and too professional for me. I used it only for the Antarctic trip where I wanted to take fast sequence pictures of animal life and have a really good big zoom (400mm equigv) Like I say, best camera I ever had, but I watn something lighter now.
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