My new camera arrived today.  I decided to upgrade from my old 2MP Fujifilm but I was determined to avoid the trap that most of us men fall into, of going for the biggest, fastest, most expensive, most technically advanced etc. and instead to just get a camera which did everything I needed it to do, do it well, but no more. That meant a point and shoot with anti-blur, good low-light performance, a half-decent zoom and good (lithium) battery life and over 5 megapixels, which is ample for what I want.

I drew up a short list which included three or four Fujis, the Nikon Coolpix S7c, the Canon A570is (or A710is) and the Panasonic Lumix TZ23 (or 22). In the end it was between the Lumix 23 and the much cheaper Fujifilm Finepix F31fd and I finally plumped for the latter. It's got everything I need and, with an added 2gig memory card, and a 580 shot battery life and an ISO up to 3200, I can take hundreds of pics at a time if need be (even in the dark!). I got mine from Amazon  for £117.50,  a price I was perfectly happy with.

Had I been a better photographer or just more ambitious, I would have gone for the superb Finepix S9600, which I would still strongly recommend for anyone looking to move up from a compact camera to an (almost) digital SLR. (It's about twice the price of the F31fd).