I have a digital camera that is at least five years old. In digital terms, that's practically from the Pleistocene era. Lately I've been having trouble where at least half of my photos are coming out poorly. This is because the camera now takes forever to figure out the light levels and then set off the flash. A bunch of my photos from my college reunion didn't come out because people thought they had taken a photo when they hadn't. And then there's all the pictures where people are making weird faces because they had to wait and wait and wait some more for the camera to actually take the photo. It kind of defeats the purpose of taking pictures.
I researched it, and apparently this is something that happens with Canons when they get older. So, ok, perhaps it is time for me to get a new camera. Do you like your camera? Would you recommend it?
We have a Canon A70, which is getting old too. We did some research looking at random pictures on pbase and the pictures taken with the Canon digital SLR are far and away much better than any compact digital. Alicia at http://rosylittlethings.typepad.com/posie_gets_cozy/house_and_garden/index.html
always has such beautiful pictures on her blog...lots of natural light even indoors.
We have a pocket Fugi that I keep in my purse and a big kodak camera for special occasions. The fugi takes much better pictures and is but more user friendly. Just a thought.
If you want to go the DSLR route, Nikon all the way. I like the Sony point and shoots but the problem is that they use proprietary memory cards. That's kind of a turnoff.