recommendations for £150 ish compact

[Chewitt]

dear fonts of knowledge

my o/h managed to kill the last compact I bought her so as its birthday time next month I thought I could buy her another.

Any recommendations - she would like a DSLR (she had her 35mm nicked a couple of years ago) but realises that a compact is a more sensible and more useful bet.

Any suggestions?

[Silver940]

Looking at a similar thing, actually swaying towards a Panasonic FX37. Anyone got any opinions on them?

[Tuna]

Depends what you want - latest spec, loads of pixels, long zoom, quick response time, optical viewfinder, manual control?

You might be able to get a secondhand / reconditioned Canon 350D (DSLR) at a reasonable price. It produces very nice pictures.

On the compact front, I've always liked Ricoh, as they focus on response times. There is nothing quite as frustrating as that half second..... pause when you try to take a photo with a bog standard compact. It's just long enough for everyone to look the other way.