All right, that last question isn’t so much an eternal question as an annual one. I’ve been asking
it in this column every year since 2001. And the answer is always the same: a lot more than last year.
This year, 11 companies submitted their best cameras with a street price under $300. The contenders are the Canon A630, the Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z700, the Fuji FinePix F30, the Hewlett-Packard Photosmart R827, the Kodak EasyShare C875, the Nikon Coolpix S7c, the Olympus Stylus 740, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX3, the Pentax Optio A20, the Samsung Digimax NV3 and the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W100.
Seven of these cameras cost about $250 or less. Two (from Panasonic and Kodak) are so close to $200, they’re practically impulse buys. You can spend the leftover money on a memory card (not included).
These are shirt-pocket cameras, consumery and sweet-looking. They’ll never rival the astonishing, National Geographic-class photos taken by the much bulkier digital S.L.R. cameras, which continue to plummet in price. ( Nikon’s new D40 costs $600, complete with lens.)
But even professionals often pack a little cam just in case — or, rather, in pocket. Here’s what’s new in the budget cams of 2006. More Camera, More Style, Modest Price - New York Times