Tom Scotney

Well, I’m going on holiday to Australia and Japan in a few months, stamping my carbon footprint onto the crying face of the earth.

While I’m there I’d love to take some holiday snaps, firstly to annoy people at work by emailing them in while they’re slogging away and I’m on the beach. Secondly, so I can bore people with some kind of slideshow when get home.

Sadly my ancient digital snapper seems to be coming apart at the seams (pretty much literally since I dropped it a few months ago). So I was hoping one of you talented photographers out there could recommend one for me to get. Ideally I’m looking for one that is (in order of importance):

• Cheap - 200 notes at an absolute most, ideally less than that
• Reasonably small, portable and tough
• Capable of taking good quality pictures
• Packed with manual features so I can play around and do arty stuff

From reading one of my gadget-porn magazines it seems like this one might be a decent bet, and cheap to boot, though lacking in the fancy-dan photographical features. Any comments or suggestions?