Inexpensive digital camera recs?

[neotoma]

So, I dropped my camera yesterday after taking pictures at a falconry demonstrations (European eagle-owls looks even more startling than Great Horned Owls, because of the orange eyes) and now it takes pictures with lines of distortion across the image.

I checked around online, and this is probably a shutter problem that needs to be dealt with by a professional repair outfit.

However, the camera is about 10 years old, and repairs would cost about $95 by one the estimation of one of the repair places...

So I'm looking for an affordable point-and-shoot camera with a good shutter speed and maybe some options for manual control. I'm most taking pictures of my projects, so it's not like I need anything fancy. Small and rugged would be nice bonuses. Any recommendations?

Comments

[dorothy1901]

I can't recommend particular models because I don't know which models are on the market right now, but I can recommend both Canon and Pentax as good brands for digital cameras.

[alchemine]

I've had a Fuji FinePix for years - bought my first one in 2003 and finally replaced it in 2010, not because it had stopped working, but because I wanted to take higher-res pics. That said, I've barely used the new one because soon after that, I got an Android phone with a good camera and I'm too lazy to carry around two devices.

[starandrea]

Got a Samsung SL605 on closeout at the beginning of the year: the point-and-shoot pictures are good but not unusually good, it has a variety of manual options I completely ignore and so can't comment on, I bought it for price ($60) and toughness and it has absolutely delivered :) Rubber buttons w/rubber backing so no dirt can get underneath; have dropped it many times, banged it into things, carried it loose in pockets and bags, no problems. (It did come with a removable plastic shield, supposedly to protect the front from scratches... the shield broke in about two weeks and I haven't missed it. No scratches that I notice.)

[spinner_atropos]

I'm very fond of my little Canon Powershot, which I've had maybe three years, though I don't think I paid what Amazon's asking for it.

[fyrdrakken]

I've had an Olympus Stylus something-or-other for years -- I mention this because I was buying a new camera because my old one had joggled out of my pocket onto concrete and broken, so one of the points I was looking for was serious impact-resistance. It has that and a decent degree of water-resistance, too (it may even have an underwater setting, I can't quite recall offhand). And it has the little modes that you shift to, for indoor or portrait or landscape or portrait+landscape or night or candlelight or snow or behind glass -- a bunch of those modes, and there are only a couple I use on a regular basis (the cuisine setting is what I generally use for knitting and yarn photos), but it's handy to have the set to resort to when I'm taking photos in a weird situation. (I think it might even have the mode that takes a flurry of pics very quickly together in the hopes of at least getting a few good ones of something actiony.)