: I put away my $300 tax return and had been saving it to buy a digital camera.
: I've been eyeing the kodak DC5000. It's weatherproof (not waterproof) and
: has 2.0 megapixels which is way more than enough. The camera had been over
: $500 everywhere I looked for months. Then one day recently I looked and it
: was around $300 so I bought one from cameraworld.com. It arrived the very
: next day. I then went to costco and bought a 128MB compact flash card for
: $60, that's dirt cheap.
: With this card I can store about 208 pictures on it in the highest resolution
: and best quality, 580 pictures in standard resolution best quality, and
: 1580 pictures in standard resolution lowest quality.

: The thing takes great pictures that are very sharp, the exposure is right,
: and the colors are spot on.

: The only negative is that it's supposed to eat batteries if you use the
: screen a lot. I mostly use the eyepeice and have taken 70 pictures so far
: (almost all with the flash) with no battery problems. I bought a gazillion
: pack of AA batteries at costco a while back for somewhere around $10 so I
: don't think the battery problem is really an issue.

: I would have posted a picture, but I just noticed that they said I'm beyond
: my 30 day trial period at photopoint.com. That bites!

: By the way. After I bought mine I looked at www.costco.com and found it for
: $250.

Dale, as long as you're happy with your camera, that's what matter most. For those of you who are still hedging, there are LOTS of excellent choices in this price range. Even as a pro photopgropher, I have found (for instance) that the Canon A20 digicam to be one of the best deal around today ... it could be had for around this price range and it is (in my humble opinion) far superior to anything else in this price range and clas (i.e. 2.1 megapixels). Here's the bonus for us paddlers: Canon also offers the best (if not only) waterproof case ... this is the real McCoy ... it's good for 100 meters underwater, and it allows FULL operation of the camera (except of course changing the batteries)!!! I could go on, but I think you get the drift ...... Peter.