Canons are terrific cameras. I have an SD900 (discontinued) and it takes fantastic photos. Canon image sensors are amazing. Nikon is Canon\'s direct competition and their cameras are among the best, though I don\'t have any direct experience with them, just reviews I\'ve been reading. Don\'t buy Kodaks. I\'ve worked with them with customers when I was a photo technician and they sucked so bad. Same with Fuji. Fuji and Kodak are horrible.
Panasonics are OK. My grandparents have one but its a pretty crappy model. They take decent photos and get decent reviews but not among the best. Olympus has been a camera manufacturer for a while. I\'d trust them. Not much experience with them. Sony bought out Konica Minolta. Konica Minolta made a lot of cheap consumer grade SLR cameras and that\'s what was bought by Sony. Sony\'s cameras getting better and they seem to be doing well for themselves and have had decent reviews. I just don\'t like their memory card. If you get something with an SD card, there is greater compatibility since many cameras use SD cards. Sony is the only ones who use memory sticks. My rule of thumb when buying a digital camera is buying a camera from a company that made cameras for years (Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax). The only difference between film and digital is that the film is replaced with an image sensor and the corresponding software. The fundamentals between film and digital are essentially the same.
