Camera Conundrum

I am currently without a digital point-and-shoot camera. This is the first time in eight years that I don't have one at my disposal. It's an odd feeling.

In 2000, my parents bought me my first digital camera. About a year and a half ago, I thought it was time to upgrade from my little 2.1 mega pixel Olympus so I bought a 5.1 mega pixel Nikon Coolpix. While the camera had plenty of wonderful features, there were two major problems: the camera was painfully slow and all indoor photos came out very dark. No matter what flash setting I tried or the adjustments I made to exposure, my indoor pictures were less than ideal. By Christmas I was tired of dealing with this camera so my husband and I bought a Canon PowerShot. I had a friend with this camera and I thought her pictures always turned out nicely so my husband and I tried that camera. A week later it went back to the store. Unlike my Coolpix, this camera's flash worked wonderfully indoors, but faces were always blurry and the photos were very pixelated (some more so than my original Olympus). The salesperson thought perhaps it was a bad lens so we tried a different camera and while it worked a little better, the quality was still poor. The second PowerShot went back on the same day we sent my Coolpix in to Best Buy to take advantage of a program that pays employees for their old electronics.

I'm not completely sure what route I will be taking next, but I'm hoping I find the right fit here soon. I feel a little lost without a point-and-shoot! Feel free to give me any advice or suggestions - I'd love to hear them!