It's really hard to beat Canon when it comes to ease of use and quality of photos for the size of the CCD. There CCDs come the closes to accurate color of all the amature cameras I have played with. They also have a fairly fast processor for the money letting you get shots off fairly quickly. Also I have a Canon S230 and it lets me take video up to 640x480. That's a higher resolution then your standard video camera has. I really recommend the Canon Elph series there hard to beat for ease of use, portability (think really small), durability, and quality.