Best pocket sized Digital Camera?

[mad lon]

Wots a digital camera?Is it one that yer press with yer finger.

Once knew a chap,really big guy,who had a genital camera.Don't know wot they are either.He said that wos a pocket camera and he used it mainly for close up work.

[chappers]

I like my Casio QV R4. Cost me about £350 quid but looks like it has been replaced by the QV R41 (£150!!! ). Nice and small, 4.12 megapixels, 3xoptical zoom and the best bit is the shutter release time of 0.01 seconds. Don't you just hate it when you press the button, wait for ages, and then get a picture that has entirely missed the moment. It also has good optics - Pentax ones I believe.

Gets my recommendation.

[CateringVan]

I bought a Canon Ixus 500 (5 megapixel, 3x optical zoom, quite small) from   1QQsassZcanon_uk1QQsoloctogZ9QQsosortpropertyZ1QQsosortorderZ1" target="_blank">the Canon shop on Ebay, although it wasnt my first choice i only paid £181 inc vat+p&p instead of £250 on the web or £330 in a local shop. Do your sums though - a lot of them go for £180 +vat + p&p which is too close to the price for a new one to make it worthwhile IMHO. There arent any on sale at the moment but they do seem to have a reasonably regular supply.

My first choice was a Pentax Optio 5si which is as good as the Ixus but a lot thinner. You can get one for about £250 - Jessops will price match any UK website which makes it easier if you have problem and want to take it back. We were going for one of those because they are tiny and it had to fit in my wife's handbag. A friend has an Optio SV which is a bit bigger but has a 5x zoom instead of 3x

Dont forget to buy a memory card - I bought a 512Mb Compactflash card for £35 from ebuyer.co.uk, it holds about 200 photos at maximum resolution and hundreds more at lower resolutions.