digicam for new year, help me out

well looking for a new digital camera for a new year..i do snap and semi-pro photography.. and what i am looking this year in a digital camera is

 - fast startup
 - fast rechargable batteries / Ni-MH AA batteries
 - abt 2 inch of LCD display
 - Resolution of 3 - 4 MP Resolution
 - lotta zoom.. something like 8x - 12x
 - ability to add additional lenses, filter, accessories
 - really good pic quality and ISO sesivity
 - some manual controls
 - short video clips with sound
 - adequate indoor flash, though i use auxilary flash for more professional indoor shoots

in the past have been really impressed and loyal to sony - bought 3 camera's and numerous other accessories from them.. but their latest product line up are more focused on hogging the resolution while quality and other abilities are goin down bundled with horrible pricing.

checked out a few models of Panasonic but as our WWGF members put it, Panasonic Suck. And the construction was cheap flimsy plastic.

looked around at cannon PowerShot A75 and S1-IS and so far they appear good to me but not really impressed.

any sugesstion..


Edited by the boss - 13 November 2005 at 11:24am

i'd agree the canon EOS is the best , lovely mind you though its quite heavy compared to some.

come down in price aswell these days.

the boss wrote: checked out a few models of Panasonic but as our WWGF members put it, Panasonic Suck. And the construction was cheap flimsy plastic.

Hallelujah~! Can I get an "AMEN"?

I've got a Casio Exilim Z-40, and it's OK for "fun", but it's not a serious camera. It is very small and very portable and does portrait type pictures "ok", but nothing more. The pictures in the Soju Dreams were taken with it.

Everybody I've asked (that knows anything about cameras) always recommends Canon. I looked at the Rebel, and it's pretty sweet. I sided with the Exilim because it's portable.

There's a new Rebel model out as well. More expensive than the PowerShots, but very very sweet.

I have a Sony DSC that's been used and abused in some rough environments - hot, cold, dust/sand, wet. It's my backpacking cam so it gets knocked around quite a bit. Even handles some very old slr lenses I had laying around. Only does 2.8 MP but it does a good job everytime, everywhere. For a natural born klutz like me, ruggedness counts for a lot.

In addition to auto, I can set it for either aperature or shutter priority. Depending upon the priority. It can be set to do 3-5 consecutive auto shots with different aperature/shutter on each shot. also does mpeg movies up to the limit of the card.