P&S for the wife

[BucketMan]

Hello.

I am pretty much clueless when it comes to the Canon line up for P&S cameras so I am in need of some help.

Wife's b-day is coming up soon, looking to get her a camera to replace the POS Olympus P&S she currently has. My major issues with that camera is red eye and the flash completely blows every picture out, it just plain sucks.

My wife is technically challenged....really, really technically challenged, so simplicity is a MUST! Video is not necessary, but if it has it no big deal. This would be used for family gatherings, vacations, etc. when I do not want to lug the 40D around.

Would like to keep it under $300, $200 would be great!

Thanks in advance!

[Jon]

The only sure cure for red-eye is to get the flash farther away from the lens; you aren't going to find many P&S cameras that can do that without adding an external flash to the mix.

Straight out of the box, you're likely to find that most of the P&S models will seem to blow out the foreground with flash. They're just so low-powered that the light falloff is really noticeable, and for a subject at maybe 10 ft. to be well-exposed you'll have a very blown-out foreground and a practically black background. You might take a look at her camera (and manual) to see if it's got any settings that will let you dial in a stop or two of flash exposure compensation and have it stay there, not resetting to its normal levels whenever you restart the camera.

[BucketMan]

Goctcha, I kinda figured that would be the case. I wasnt sure if any P&S had any sophisticated metering or flash compensation abilities.

I surfed around a bit and am interested in the PowerShot SD780 IS. Only a couple posts on it here, but most seems satisfied with it.

A trip to Best Buy might be in order to play with it a bit.