Oh no! What a bummer!
I have a small camera and a bigger one, and I really love the small one. Its a Canon Powershot A80. I think it takes excellent pics, even though it just has 4 megapixels. It has a bunch of settings that I never figured out, being the slow learner that I am! ;)
My daughter got a 35mm Olympus that she was happy with.
I also have a Canon Rebel XTi, but that is more than $500.
If they still make it, I think you would be really happy with the Canon Powershot A80. Good luck. And my condolences!

I only paid $99 for my new Canon PowerShot A490. I think it makes pretty good close up pictures, which is mostly what I want when photographing butterflies and caterpillars. I made this picture of a late instar question mark cat today -
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Sherry

MissSherry....may I ask what your settings were for that? Did you use a tripod or anything like that?
That's a great pic. Mine has a zoom up to a certain point, then it zooms more, but you really need something to totally stabilize it, or its blurry.
Canon makes some great little cameras Elisabeth.

Something happened to my Powershot A80,and the pictures were black and purple. I found out that Canon had gotten a bad batch of some part of the camera. I sent it to them and they fixed it free of charge. And my camera was probably at least 8 years old. I was impressed with that!

Good cameras are getting cheaper and cheaper. You really could consider a point-and-shoot for field use these days.

I recommend checking out dpreview.com. He does an excellent job of comparing cameras side-by-side and of providing a scientific basis for his opinions.

Jeff

Here is a link that might be useful: DPReview

Catherinet, my camera focuses automatically to whatever you focus on - just press the shutter down a little (not all the way) and it does the work for you. You can see it focusing, and once it does, just press the shutter all the way down. Being no photographer, the ease of this camera is made to order for me.
There are some pretty pink roses that bloom this time every year located close to me. They're near a real old, falling in house, which is close to other old country houses. These roses grow with no care and have spread all down the railroad track and across the street from the house where I think they were originally planted. I inquired as to what they were on the Antique Roses Forum, and they're pretty sure it's the old Seven Sister rose, introduced in 1816 - I plan to take some cuttings to root, since I've got a good spot in mind for them to grow here. I made this picture of them yesterday -
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Jeff, I can't remember which reviews I read, but one of the reasons I decided to get the one I did was that the reviewer said it made good close-ups. I figured even if he was wrong, I could afford to buy a better camera later. Somebody recommended the Nikon Cool Pix - that may be my next one.
Sherry

I bought my Sony DSC-H2 about 4 years ago and have been really happy with it. It has a macro setting for close shots and a good zoom. At the time it was about $400 but like Jeff said, prices have continued to really drop.
Karen

There are several toy Phasers on the market for $10-$15. They would have a stun setting and tolerate laundry more than a digital camera.

LOL Larry! My kids light sabers lasted all of 1 day with them playing jedi warrior with them....

Thanks for all the advice. I will check it all out.

-Elisabeth

I tried to post a message on this thread last night and got rejected. I'm going to try again.

Miss Sherry, I can tell you are enjoying your new camera--the pictures are wonderful.

Elizabeth, I left a camera out in the rain and it still works. The secret is don't turn the camera on until it has had a chance to dry out. However, my camera didn't get aggitated. I think anything by Canon or Nikon, you can't go wrong. And I loved my little Sony, it did a good job.

Sandy

Yes, I'm enjoying it, Sandy. I made a picture of a late instar palamedes swallowtail caterpillar late this afternoon -
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Sherry

Missherry, Beautiful photo! I really like the way the colors in the bottom of the pic work so well with the rest.

camera reccomendation - the one I purchased 6-8 months ago
Sony DSC-H20, I very happy with it, great zoom, color, $150

Thank you everybody, it was really helpful. I went to the website that Jeff recommended. It was very thorough, if technical. Through two indepent studying bouts on that site and the internet, I decided on...drum roll please...the Panasonic Lumix F35 X18 or a bunch of numbers like that. Turns out it is the same camera my sister has, and she loves it. It is not a DSLR but will accept a macro lens increasing it's close range picture taking. I saw an amazing picture of a skipper's head taken with it. You can see all the fuzz. It was a median price range between one of the point and shoots and a low range DSLR. I used to have a Nikon SLR way back in the day. I would love a DSLR but I just don't have the time to fuss with it. This seemed like a great intermediary. I just made contact with my photobucket account again. So look for some pictures from me this summer. I am so excited.
Thank you very, very much for your advice,
Elisabeth

Hi Elisabeth,

I have a Lumix--can't remember the number--but I've had it now for almost three years. I love it--pretty easy to use.

Looking forward to seeing your pics!

Mine's a Lumix also, and I've been mostly happy.

I love the lens and especially the DSLR-like ring zoom and ring focus. I don't love so well the fact that low-light pictures are very noisy. (Yours may be different).

Jeff

Jeff;
I wont pretend to understand what noise is on a digital picture. I know it is something a lot of the more knowledgable photographers complained about on various models. One commenter said that it was typical with a lot of cameras and that professionals clean it up with after camera software. Don't know if that is true or not but I thought I would put that out there.
-Elisabeth

Nerd alert.

Each pixel in your camera receives light and "fires" as a certain amount of a color (red, green, blue are standard). Sometimes, pixels get confused for one reason or another and fire the wrong amount. That's noise. It shows up in your picture as a pixel that's obviously the wrong color; but since the pixels are small, it just looks "grainy."

Think of it as the visual version of the "hiss" that we all loved about cassette tapes.

Noise-filtering software, either in-camera or in Photoshop, smooths over the noise by identifying pixels that are obviously not the same color as their neighbors and replacing them with the "right" color.

The plus side is that the noise goes away; the minus side is that detail goes away, too.

DSLR's have larger sensor sizes (15x22mm up to 24x36mm for the whole sensor), and non-DSLR's have smaller sensor sizes. DSLR pixels are therefore larger and thus less likely to be confused.

My Lumix has a pretty small sensor (5x7mm for the whole sensor, 1/9 of the area of the smallest DSLR). The up side of that is that it's easy to give a small sensor a large zoom with a small lens. Hence, 12x zoom is quite doable. The down side is that the small sensor is relatively noisy, and in low-light settings, the noise gets pretty bad.

I figured that I could live with noise in low light, since most of my subjects only pose in sunshine. And mostly, I was right. Occasionally, though, I wish I could get a good, detailed shot of a Satyr in the woods without having to resort to a flash.

Jeff

Last summer I bought a Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ3 ($300) I LOVED it. Takes stunning landscape photographs and the zoom is very good. Then last month the LCD broke, not sure how that happened but it could have been rough handling since I like to carry the camera in my pocket a lot, because you never know when a great photo op is going to present itself. The camera still works fine, but you can barely see the LCD.

So I decided to try the Canon equivalent, and bought a Canon SX200IS and it's okay. But I missed the Lumix which is an overall superior camera for roughly the same price, except for perhaps Macro shots. I'm returning the Canon, and have already bought another Lumix - but this time bought a refurbished DMC-ZS1 for $150.

Thanks Jeff. I had to laught at the nerd alert on a board dedicated to butterfly gardening!
-Elisabeth

LOL! this is the funniest post i've seen lately. but i'm glad you asked the question. you reminded me to dig out the instruction book that came with my camera because i've wanted to shoot close ups of the rare atala butterfly that is in my backyard.

I laughed at the "Nerd alert" too--isn't that just an expectation on here?? :)

Jeff you probably already figured this out with having to take macro pics in low light situation, but I played around with the brightness settings last night. I wanted to get a couple pics of the frit cats, and it was at night with only one light in my kitchen. I needed the flash, but it washed out the cat. I turned the brightness setting WAY down, and this is what happened:

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I'm not an expert--but you can even see the spiracles.

Thaaaat's cool.