Topic Digital Camera Hunt

Indiescribe

This is a thread to take in the user opinion of the best medium range Digital camera in the market. I am considering three brands -

Canon

Sony

Panasonic

I would like to ask what features are absolutely essential for eg, is it optical zoom over digital zoom, memory etc.

What features are desirable? E.g, dock support etc

What features we can live without?

Help me out guys!

-HAL-

I've always been a Canon fan myself..

Are you looking for a compact camera or a bigger "pro" one??

You can safely pay no attention to how "good" the digital zoom is on different cameras since will make the picture quality worse, no matter what the manufacturer say...
3-4x optical zoom, a good optical stabilizer, 8Mpix (or more) are normally good enough on compact cameras since you'll need a tripod in most cases if you're going to zoom more than that since shaking hands will make the picture blurry..