I had most of Canons top end stuff for a while, have had a couple dozen cameras and am still into photography, but have scaled back and no longer am so serious about it.
I currently just use a compact for everyday stuff, bought my last one about 6 month ago. I got a Canon A640 for me, but there are plenty others that might suit you better so research well. A few good sites:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare.asp
http://www.megapixel.net/html/reviews.php
http://www.dcresource.com
http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/d/D...ra-Reviews.htm
First, priorities your features to see what you really want. To give you an idea what I mean, the criteria I chose, in order of importance to me, and how the A640 fits were:
ESSENTIAL:
Must be able to fit in my pocket. (Luckily my jeans have big pockets, the A640 fits in all my pants, but nothing much bigger would)
Must take A4 batteries. I never want to go flat and not be able to buy batteries straight away. No matter how well I plan, sometimes batteries go flat when you need them. It's easy and cheap to carry spares. Proprietary batteries are expensive, can be hard to get on the street and don't last more than a coupe years. My rechargeable AAs last for about 600 - 1000 shots.
Must have an LCD that folds out and rotates. This was one of the big reasons for going digital for me. You can hold the camera anywhere your hand can get to and still see the screen. Handy in crowds, for macro, self portraits with friends etc.
Must have a "good" lens. Obviously.
Must use SD cards. Cheaper, bigger capacity, more common, fit in my mobile at the time and smaller.
Full manual control. I use either Av or Tv depending on the situation. I do wish the A40 had Bulb mode and multi-exposures but can live without it.
Good close macro shots.
DESIRABLE:
The more optical zoom, the better. A640 only has 4x. I would like more and would have bought anything that had the features above with more zoom.
The more pixels the better. Now the amount of pixels is far less important than the marketing department would have you beleive. A good lens is far more important. However, the Fuji Velvia film I used to use equates to about 70 megapixels so no current consumer camera can compete. I rarely get photos made into billboards but stil... The A640 is 10 but 6+ is fine for most people.
Movies with sound. A640 has it, as do most
Image stabilisation. An awesome feature and I would pay a lot for it. Sadly no camera with all my Essentials has it.
Large LCD. A640 is 2.5 inch. Big enough.
Fast continous shooting, 1600 ISO mode, fast start up, wide angle lens, light weight, fast max shutter speed and ability to fit filters would have been nice but the A640 doesn't really do too well in those areas.
Thats all I can think of right now. Hope it helps and good luck.
