Folks: I finally broke down and bought the new camera-- a Panasonic DMC-TZ5. It's 9 megapixels, has a rechargeable battery, and a 10X zoom. It also has a 3" LCD for us old folks. Reviews have been very positive. You can even take movies with it! Here's the best part: I bought it on Amazon after tracking prices there for a few days. It finally went below my "threshold" of $225, and I snapped it up for $222 with free shipping. Bought a card and a little case, too. MSRP is $349, so I got a pretty good deal. Spent this afternoon reading through the manual and taking a few test shots. Uploaded them into the PC, tweaked them a little, and moved to Picasa for sharing. Very easy. Too bad it's been raining all day. I'm anxious to get outside and shoot some pics of the WS babies and the transplants. Thanks for all your help and recommendations! Prof

"I'm so impressed. This has helped me a great deal. I would love to just verify one thing. You said Image Stabilization is possible thru the use of a special lens?" Yes, some lenses have it, some don't. Some don't matter as much. My 10-22 does not have it, and it gets photos as if it did. Each lens is different. I only have one lens with IS, the 28-135, but what it basically means is you can get clear shots at lower shutter speeds (NO BLURRING DUE CAMERA SHAKE BUT BLURRING IF YOU DIDN'T NAIL THE FOCUS RIGHT), down to like 1/10 sec that you could not without it. 1/60 a sec is about the limit handheld w/o IS, but some people are steady enough and/or use a monopod and can get 1/30 and still sharp. Monopod you can get down to around 1/10. Any lower than that and you need a tripod. When you look at the lineup of Canon lenses, it says IS on the description. That means it has image stabilization. With Nikon, I think it is VR. Means the same thing. IS is almost a must if you have a long zoom lens and want to shoot say birds closeup without a tripod. JoanMn made some good comments. "Shooting pics in RAW you need to make color corrections?" Not always. It just gives you a second chance to change exposure and white balance, also does color corrections if needed. Some are not needed. "So it's not a perfect picture just by pointing and shooting with RAW?" Not usually with me, but when you have more experience and know what settings and approach to use, you up your chances of getting a perfect photo out of the camera. That is the goal. RAW just gives you a better second chance. Post processing jpgs gives you a second chance with color, sharpening, contrast, other things but will not get back lost detail. It gives an otherwise blah photo more "punch". RAW can do that but sometimes the lost detail just isn't there. "You still have to make corrections?" Most people do on photos they display on the web, those who want perfection, here I think most are posting out out of the camera shots. At small sizes, it's not such a big deal but can be. If you want really nice prints, you should tweak most of your photos but you do not have to. At the minimum, you should straighten and sharpen them. Photos out of dslr cameras tend to be soft. A little sharpening makes them look better. I sharpened my white dogwood blossoms. You can tell the difference. I did not have to shoot RAW to do that, but did have to shoot RAW if the white balance was off (I liked it the way it was) and I lost some of the detail in the bright areas. With RAW, I got most of it back. You can't do that shooting in JPG. There may be other things about it I'm not up on yet that make it more advantageous. It can be a pain because it involves some more steps in post processing, but it is worth it to me on my nicer photos. Others I don't bother, like one you want to post on ebay, proofs, quick and dirty, etc. "The photo's are beautiful and the hands on monitor pic is great. If I only understood it. But, I'm learning a bit as I go." After I saw it explained about 10 times and saw examples people posted on another forum, can't name it here, rules, I began to see the advantages. Once I started doing it, it started making some sense and I'm comfortable with it now, but haven't reached expert status. I was looooooost at first. But my experience with my little point and shoot which had some advanced features helped a lot and in no time I was shooting in aperture priority, shutter priority, and doing some night fireworks shots full manual. If you do decide to go dslr, you can get some basic settings from people, shoot in program mode just like a point and shoot and grow into the advanced features at your own pace. Some of this is advanced, and you cannot possibly be expected to understand it. You will understand it more as you see it discussed and think it over. I inundated you with too much information, but if you are thinking about a Rebel XT, those are the possibilities. One very important thing I failed to mention is that with the low noise at high ISO on the XT and mine, you can take really, really nice photos indoors without a flash. Nikon isn't quite as good that way but excels in other ways. Sometimes you need a flash anyway because the available light is just not sufficient. You get to know by practicing what you can and cannot do. The big thing with some people are concert photos. If you get the XT or a Nikon, you are not allowed to use flash in some venues, sometimes no camera at all. If you are not allowed to use a flash but are allowed to take photos, you bump up the ISO way high (advantage of Canon, silky photos at high ISO, no noise until 1600 and 3200, amazing) and get photos you simply could not get any other way. Stunning ones by those who know what they are doing with just the right lens for that situation. I chose the white blossom photo because of the white highlights, there were others I could have used for an example. I shot a race today and I did not get my exposure right and did not shoot in RAW for the action shots won't go into why, shot all the stop action shots in sports mode. Thank heaven for Photoshop. The runners are too dark because the camera metered on the whole scene, the bright buildings in the morning sun and the runners were mostly shaded. I should have chosen a mode where I could use partial metering. Now I am going to have to use the shadow highlights tool to correct most of them, shot 595 photos. You can batch process, I don't know completely how to do that, so many things to learn yet, but as far as I am concerned, CS2 was worth it just for that one tool, shadow highlights which will fix most of the keepers for me (I actually got a bunch of duds I will toss) even though you can probably do it in other programs as well. That is going to be a lot of work and is an example where you color correct even though you didn't shoot in RAW. I shot a few in RAW where there wasn't so much motion. I should have taken some trial shots, read the lcd and histogram (you want a nice mountain touching both ends if you can get it, sometimes not possible, have to compromise) and used those numbers to go full manual or something, don't know yet but will find out. I can't see those little numbers that well for one thing on the lcd or in the viewfinder, and I am not expert enough to shoot full manual a whole series of shots. Some do. There are other ways around that, and I will try to get some answers as to what I should have done from the "pros" lol. If I was able to be any help to you, I'm happy for that. Kind of a hasty response; I've been up since 5:30, and it is getting hot. Days of it ahead yet according to forecast. As you move along, you will get some "aha" moments, that's what she was talking about. That's the way it's been with me. I need some more "ahas" myself lol.

I have the Kodak Easy Share, also, with a memory card. I've found it's important to use lithium batteries (photo batteries)--they last a MUCH, MUCH longer. Janice, mine takes a moment to reset, so it isn't like an old 35mm manual that you can take several shots/second, but it isn't bad. Uploading is easy, and I can use the memory card to print directly from the printer (not uploading to the computer!).

Hi Pam...The best thing to do it get on to the Camera reviews and look up all the good and no so good things about the cameras you are interested in. Camera Reviews. Go try them all out, feel them to see what is comfortable in your hand. Iam a Canon Fan I have two of their Dig Cameras and a 35mm one..My first dig camera was the Canon A70 and I loved it and still use it my other is a SLR its a 8 mp... Cameras are a personal choice you really have to buy what you want...I found with the Olympus I was not happy with the way I held it and using my daughters one I would often find that the top of my finger was always in the pic, so I then looked for other brands and settled on the Canon because that bulge where the four batteries go was terrific for me to hold the camera It just felt more secure with my arthritic hands. And yes look for one with more Optical Zoom, my dig zoom is always off to get the dig zoom look all you do is crop your pics...About batteries just remember the bigger the mps the more power you are going to use ..My A70 3.2mp camera uses four AA NiMH rechargeable batteries when new I used to get about 250 pics as the LCD Monitor was on all the time, as the batteries got older I got less...My 8 mp camera uses a lithium battery (rechargeable) and I get over 1000 shots, if the camera manufacturer recommends one of them then its the best for that model remember the more mps your camera has the more power you need, with my SLR camera even the IS on my lens uses lots of power. I get beautiful clear pics from my 3.2 mp camera you dont need big mps for a good pic you only need them if you want to print big pics and as Tony said smaller mps are fine if you want to take 6x4 pics..I have had some of mine enlarged to the next size with my smaller camera and they were still clear..And just remember the pic is only as good as the person behind the camera and if you cannot hold a camera steady it does not matter how much it costs or how big it is..Hope this helps...Cheers..MM.