Canon A85 or Elph S410 or SD300

[sharibrat]

New to the digital world......I received a Nikon Coolpix 4100 for Christmas after reading good reviews of it. But I am unhappy with how quickly it goes through batteries (AA), how dark the pics seem when using flash, and mostly the delay of taking the picture and writing it to memory!! I am missing so many shots because of the delay!

A friend of mine had a Canon and showed me virtually no delay and it is adjustable, so now I am considering returning my Nikon for a Canon. It also had a mode to continuously take pictures which was fast. On my Nikon, continuous only works with no flash on and then the pics are blurry.

Anyway, my Nikon was around $240 on sale from Wal Mart. They have a 30 day return policy that I am still in. I'd like to spend around the same or a little bit more.

RECOMMENDATIONS?? Please! I want no less than 4.0 MP, for good 4x6 pics and need to be able to shoot quickly at my 2 year old!

Thanks
Shari

[roadrider]

Go for the A85. Size is slighty bigger than 4100. Function wise, the A85 got most of the feature you will need. As for the AA batt, go for the ones thats above 2000mAH.
If you want compact size and got some manual feature(can't adjust shutter/aperture though), go for SD300. Just got my SD300 and am very happy with it. Hope this helps.

[Jon]

Any digital will eat alkaline batteries. They are much happier with NiMH rechargables (2 sets, one in the camera and one charged/charging) if they use AAs. Some come with their own Li ion rechargables which also last well.

There are things you can do to speed up the cameras' response, like pre-focussing (depress the shutter half way to lock in the focus before you're ready to shoot), and turning off red-eye reduction. If you can set the exposure in advance, it also helps. But most P&S digitals have relatively slow reponse time.

It's possible that faster memory cards will work in your camera (current Nikon or a new Canon). Some of the new Canons have "continuous shooting" which will let you take a burst of pictures somewhat faster than in normal mode, too. But continuous mode is too fast for most flashes to keep up with, so the camera will be at a fairly slow shutter speed, thus blurry pictures.