My old Canon A70 is getting rough, so I've been looking into getting a new camera. Through my searching so far, this one looks pretty good.

Fuji FinePix S6000fd

As there are numerous guys here that are into photography, what are your thoughts? I'd like to keep it around $300 (or less obviously) There are pretty much three major features in need.

1) great looking photos
2) ability to bring RAW data into Ps
3) ease of use - I want the ability to point and shoot if I want to.

What say you good people?

I assume you’re looking for a compact? Point and shoot?

If so, I just bought 24 Olympus Stylus 770 SW’s for my team. These guys are high tech industrial mechanics. The tools they use range from precision measuring instruments to spline drive impact wrenches. In other words, they tend to be rough on tools. We are finding that with email and electronic work management systems, that digital photographs have become part of the day’s job, so I bought them cameras to use as tools. I wanted cameras that can bounce around in tool boxes or the back pocket and not get destroyed. I wasn’t all that worried about picture quality when I picked this camera, but these little buggers take a mighty fine looking picture. Plus, they’re water proof, crush proof, and you can drop them onto concrete from 10’ feet and they still work (these traits have been verified, numerous times already)…

How much is Olympus paying you nowadays, Mike?

Mike, j/k.

Craig, that thing is HUGE! My (unprofessional) opinion is that - if you REALLY need RAW AND you are willing to carry around something that big, you should just bite the bullet and step up monetarily to an entry-level DSLR like a Canon Rebel or Nikon D40 or something.

If you want a new $300 digital camera, I'd sacrifice the big lens and the RAW and get a compact like another Canon or a Casio.

That Fuji does look like a lot of camera for the money, though.

I'm helping a lot, huh? Not.

I have personally been eyeing the Canon A710 IS for awhile now...it was announced last August, so I am waiting until the updated version comes out.

6x zoom, pretty compact (fits in jacket pocket), IS, and nothing beats canon.

check out dpreview.com . They are the definitive source on all things digital camera, Canon is the top brand name on their site that is researched by consumers. Also, I think 4 out of the top 10 rated cameras are canon's. Stick with Canon IMHO.

dpreview.com is one of the sites that raved about the fuji. I may not have mentioned it on my lists of wants, but the zoom is pretty important as well. Getting a decent picture of Roger Federer while playing is tough from the cheap seats.

RAW is important to me. I want to play around with the files in photoshop. All the compression and noise reduction crap messes up the images. Bleck.

I'll read up on the Canon A710.

I've owned 3 Olympus cameras and I swear that I will never buy one again. I guess I am just a sucker for familiarity, but geez, these were $600-700 cameras when I bought them, with the most recent being 2 years ago.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. Oh, the current one was dropped from about 3 feet, but the batter door latch cracked and now it is just a slight nudge from never closing again and thus not usable as the batteries wouldn't stay in. Cost to fix it is $300 for the new body and my time to swap the guts... No thanks. I am going to go Fuji, Kodak, or Nikon like the rest of my family if I buy another digi-cam. Or maybe I'll just replace the camera and our camcorder with a HD "all in one" that writes to a hard drive who knows. Anyway, I am done rambling (in this post anyway)...

actually,

I have been eyeing the Panasonic DMC-TZ3. 10x optical zoom in a pretty compact package.

I am pretty undecided as to what I am going to get. The 10x optical looks freakin' sweet. However, I am going to wait and see what Canon's August/September models bring before I make a decision.

EDIT: Sorry spiff, I thought you were wanting a compact. Since you are not, I would recommend the new Canon S5 IS (no RAW on the S5 tho...sheesh!, and its a little out of your price range, $500)

We got a a Fuji F650 recently for free (my wife won it at work). I've only played around with it a little so far though, so I'm not really sure how good it is at this point. I was happy with the Nikon Coolpix 3700 we had, so I haven't been anxious to get the larger memory, extra battery, case, etc. we would need to make the Fuji become our primary camera.

If anyone knows anything about this one I'd be happy to hear it though.

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Craig, that thing is HUGE!

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Enough said.