Inbox:Friends of mine recently let me into their "married couple tiff". They had been arguing about getting a digital camera, writes Mike Butcher.
In an unexpected role-reversal, she was all for getting the semi- professional Digital SLR with all the knobs and whistles built in.
She was "fed up", she said, with his out-of-focus shots of their children and wanted to get a camera would leave almost nothing to chance. Conversely he was all for just getting a simple compact camera, not unlike the one they'd had for years. What to do? The good news is that these days you don't always have to choose between convenience and quality.
Palm-sized digital cameras are getting better and better all the time as the technology shrinks and trickles down from the high-end cameras, while big, bright three-inch screens on the back are becoming increasingly common. Recently three cameras with similar specs have turned up, making the choice an interesting play-off between features.
The 7.2 mega-pixel Samsung i70 (from about €235) is a good-looking slide open design, which is capable of recording widescreen video. It has an intuitive nine-button user interface and even doubles as a portable media player and an MP3 player, so you can have video and music on the move.
A text viewer enables one to read articles, but don't expect too much from this quirky feature. Image stabilisation and Samsung's intelligent face-recognition technology recognises the faces of subjects and accurately focuses on them.
A slightly more serious choice might be the 7.2-megapixel Nikon S50c (from about €414).
This has optical image stabilisation and is compatible with the new generation of memory cards, dubbed SDHC. It even has Wi-Fi, so that you can upload your images straight to the web from the camera.
It comes with 2GB of online storage from Nikon and notifies friends when you have uploaded new pictures. Great for those addicts of photo-sharing sites like flickr.com.
Since the camera is only 21mm thick and weighs only 125g you can be confident of taking good shots and still be able to pop the camera in a shirt or a jacket pocket.
The most "everyday camera" pick of the three is Canon Ixus 75 (from €310) in its consumer Ixus friendly range. This mid-range digital snapper has a great lens, which takes quality photos - assuming you use it correctly. As a bonus it comes with extras such as a touch-sensitive control dial.
The 7.1-megapixel camera has a sculpted shape and v face detection technology (similar to Samsung's face-recognition feature). Tired of that annoying red eyes after flash photography? This will correct that problem at the touch of a button after you play back the image.
The viewing screen can be seen from more extreme angles in the past, helping those moments when everyone crowds around the camera to see that great picture of Dad making a fool of himself at the wedding.
