I use Firefox all the time and have never had any of the problems you speak of. You should check to make sure you are using the most recent build. They are always coming out with new builds which fix many bugs. You could also try a reinstall and trashing the prefs. I love the customizability and the extensive preferences of Firefox. The main problem with Safari is you can't really customize much of your interface. Plus Safari, in my opinion is the ugliest browser ever (yes even uglier than Netscape 6). There are some really cool skins for Firefox.
I have never tried Camino, but since Firefox is the flagship program it gets updated a lot more frequently than the other Mozilla children like Camino. The Mozilla browser itself is buggy and slow. For this reason I would probably recommend Firefox over Camino (even though Camino is cocoa) or Mozilla.
There are a number of other browsers for OS X. My other favorite is OmniWeb, but they charge money for it and it's not updated as often as Firefox or Safari. It has the BEST tabbed browsing I've ever seen and you can customize the toolbar completely with many many different buttons. I've also tried iCab and Opera, both of which are buggy at best for Mac. Microsoft killed IE when Safari came out and AOL silently killed Netscape for Mac with Netscape 8, so I would not recommend either of these browsers.