Oh my goodness, finding a cheap digital camera never seemed so excruciating. I have had a Nikon Coolpix 4600 camera for five years now, and Old Faithful had served me well. Until I dug into my purse at the Lifehouse concert at Homecoming and discovered, to my dismay, that the LCD screen had cracked. What’s worse is, the LCD fluid had leaked into the camera. So, not only was I without a working screen, but I was also without a working camera. And it is now Black Friday/Holiday shopping season, and I am already on a tight budget. Fortunately, I hadn’t included the amount I’d get from my car in my budget, so I have a little wiggle room, about $100 of wiggle room.

So, I figured finding a decent digital camera under $100 wouldn’t be too hard. The last time I’d looked at digital cameras, you’d be lucky to find anything decent quality below that. My, how times have changed. I went looking through the local Black Friday ads and was astounded to have to scour the internet for hours to find the best option for the money. My Coolpix was only 5 Megapixels and had 3x Optical Zoom. Now I can’t find anything under 8 MP, which made me very happy. I’d like to think of myself as between a novice and an expert photographer. While I might be ready for my first DSLR, I can’t afford one right now; so I opted to look at point and shoots.

Canon, Nikon, Olympus, and Polaroid, all my standbys for good cameras, had a variety of options under $100. I swear I went to fifteen or twenty different review sites to narrow down my search. And all these new brands on the market didn’t help. Vivitar and GE both had comparable cameras at much, much lower prices. However, I’m a big subscriber to “you get what you pay for”, so I opted out of reading reviews for these cameras. After a few sites, I noticed the top three or four cameras shifted slots from site to site, and I new I had my narrowed list:

• Canon’s A495
• Nikon’s L22
• Olympus’s FE 4020
• Kodak’s EasyShare C195

I googled each of the cameras individually and read 3-5 professional reviews and 3-5 consumer reviews. I always made sure to include a highest rating and a lowest, well-written rating in each search, just to help sift through the fluff and the obvious PR staffs’ intervention on consumer sites. The results of my search led me to pick option #4, the Kodak EasyShare C195 (in purple, my favorite color). The C195 has everything I’m looking for at the perfect price. It has 14 MP resolution, 5X optical zoom, has a SanDisk slot, and runs about $90. Needless to say, if the camera lives up to its reviews, I will be thrilled. I’ll post a photo taken on the new cam as soon as it’s in my possession. Happy Holidays guys, and good luck on your bargain hunting.