Newbie warning :-) Long post, sorry. I have done a bit of a search, but
I've not yet found a "what camera" thread which has quite the
combination I'm about to present...

My mother is having her 70th birthday soon, and my father thinks that
she could make good use of a digital camera. She's pretty good
technically, but none of us has a digital camera at the moment(*) and so
although I know a reasonable amount about these things from a paper
specification POV, I'm interested in some real-world opinions please.

At the moment she uses an Olympus OM1n with either a 28mm or a 50mm
lens. This produces excellent pictures, but the camera is beginning to
show its age, and she tends to take less than a film-full at a time
which can make for frustrating delays between visits to the developer.

The new camera will probably be used mainly for landscape work so a
lens of at least 28mm equivalent is a necessity.

I can't see mum getting on with an LCD screen outdoors in bright sun so
it needs to have a good viewfinder. Optical sounds great, and for
wide-angle shots the offset of an optical viewfinder (dad's budget
really isn't going to stretch to a DSLR) shouldn't be a problem, but a
good electronic viewfinder would be ok too. Mum needs glasses for close
work so the viewfinder needs to have the sort of surround that works
with glasses.

She never uses a tripod and does suffer from arthritis, so as short a
shutter-lag as possible would be good.

A favourite trick for landscapes is the use of a polarising filter so a
lens with a standard filter thread (current filters are 49mm, but buying
new isn't necessarily a problem) is a good idea.

On the subject of a polariser, can its effect be gauged accurately in an
electronic viewfinder? I realise this kind of thing would be impossible
in an optical viewfinder that isn't TTL. Do the autofocusing systems on
digital cameras prefer circular polarisers or linear? We find linear
much easier to use on our manual SLRs.

She rarely uses flash, but does take indoor shots using long exposures,
particularly inside churches and the like. In fact she has quite a
repertoire of low-contrast shots as one of her hobbies is family history
and so pictures of memorial tablets and worn-down or lichen-covered
gravestones feature fairly heavily. A camera that can auto focus and
decently expose that kind of thing would be very useful.

She will not want to spend hours and hours retouching pictures, and
certainly won't want to spend money on something like Photoshop. Quite
honestly the most she's likely to want to do is crop or resize and
print, so a good exposure "out of the box" is vital.

Mum has an HP colour laser printer attached to a Mac Mini. She does a
lot of painting from her photographs and one particular advantage of a
digital picture will be the ability to print it, or a section of it, out
at a large size for detail. Partly for this reason I've been looking at
7 or 8 Mpix cameras.

Erm, that's about it really. To summarise, I think my mum needs a camera
with:

* wide angle of 28mm (35mm equiv) or better
* short shutter delay
* optical or very good electronic viewfinder
* decent ability flashless in low-light situations
* filter thread
* 6Mpix as a minimum, 7 or 8 preferably.
* Mac compatible (OS-X)
* as robust as possible; the OM1n has survived quite a few knocks and
  bumps

Based on extensive research (three magazines and a couple of evenings on
the interweb) I'm particularly interested in the Konica Minolta A200 and
the Olympus C7070 (or 8080). I realise that these are close to
low-end DSLR prices, but when you factor in the cost of a lens they
begin to look much cheaper. At the moment I favour the A200 for three
reasons:

1 It looks "chunkier" and more like an SLR. With carpal tunnel
  problems, chunky is good.

2 It has a mechanical zoom function. I hate fiddly button-zooms.

3 Although it has an electronic viewfinder, all the reviews I've read
  say that it is among the best currently available.

On the other hand I've heard that the C7070 has a better focussing
system and might have the edge on exposing awkwardly lit scenes
(consider a seascape).

But I'm open to other suggestions. As this is quite a hefty purchase,
we're probably going to go to the local camera shop (Walters in
Caerphilly) to "try before buy" so any models which are only available
at specific retailers or online are not really under consideration.

I can see that if this works out, my dad is going to use it too, so
secondary considerations are:

* reasonably long zoom (he tends to photograph aircraft and garden
  wildlife)

* the ability to display to a TV (though photo playback units aren't
  all that expensive these days)

Mainly for budget reasons I'm personally sticking with film for now, but
I see this exercise as a good way to get some proper experience with
digital without incurring too much cost!

(*) My 4-year-old has a 1.3Mpix Fuji camera which cost £20 and is
perfect for his kind of "snap happy" photography. I have to say that,
despite the fixed focus, low number of pixels, low cost, very long
shutter delay and tiny tiny flash, I'm very impressed with it. I used to
carry a disposable 35mm around for the occasional snapshot, but I've
taken to carrying the 4-year-old now instead :-)

TIA for any advice.

Hwyl!

M.