Hi chaps,

At yet another risk of brand snobbery from some, I have now configured
my killfile, so I'll see how that pans out. Just to give you some idea,
this is the first time I've actually used a killfile in 9 years of
usenet.

Anyway, I considered carefully all the suggestions made here (well, most
anyway!). In the end I did some extensive research, mainly at Steve's
Digicams, as well as other web locations too. I found as many test
prints as I could.

I really wanted to stick with my most important criteria as much as
possible, but as one of those was cost, I knew I'd have to compromise as
well. I wanted to spend less than £100 if possible, but would go more if
I found it warranted the difference.

You may remember that I wanted something pocketable, weather proof, and
quick with reasonable quality images. Other features were secondary,
although I would have liked a wider angle lens as well.

After many hours pouring over images and reviews, I decided on an
Olympus Mju 500. I found these on eBay for £69, with a one year
warranty, markes as factory returns. Mine actually arrived as a new and
sealed package - and with a 64MB card instead of the advertised 32MB.

Again, at the risk of retort, on looking at all the test images, I
started to find the high megapixel (6MP and up) compact cameras were
rather disappointing. Many showed some blurring on edges, and seemed to
suffer with chromatic aberration. Noise also started to become an issue
in all but the most expensive models.

However, when I compared images from the 5MP models, they appeared much
sharper and had much better definition. Noise also seemed to be much
less of an issue. The reviews I read also seem to confirm this too,
there were many comments about the blurring in particular.

There was also much less difference between the makes and models at 5Mp
too. I certainly compared the images between the contemporary models
from Canon, Fuji and Nikon, and found they were very close to each other
in terms of overall image quality. Moving up the MP range started to
reveal bigger differences though, and there was no doubt that the Canon
were probably the better models here.

In the end though, the Mju 500 just ticked most of the boxes I needed -
weatherproof, good image quality, pocketable, cheap, and robust (it has
a full metal body). The lens was also slightly wider angle than the
others at a similar price level - going down to 35mm.

One observation though, that may be worth some discussion. Did we see
the optimum in compact CCD performance at 5MP? Because I was surely
puzzled by the poor quality of images over 6MP.