Miss Wiggle
Practically perfect in every way
thanks for your help joel, i'll have a look at that. if not i'll look for something with a similar spec and then I know it'll be half decent.

Optical zoom is the best as no, or very little, detail is lost. Not sure whats around these days but 10x optical zoom is more than most people will need.
The fuji finepix range is pretty good:
For a little more than £100 look at this one:
http/www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/135359/art...s5600-zoom.html
Sure you can get a better price or bundles items if you look around.
I used to use this before moving to DSLR.
I have a real problem with expensive DSLR's. in the days of silver halide. if there was an improved quality film developed, you just went out and bought it!! to improve the quality of images from a DSLR, you need to throw away the whole camera.