[sGt HarDKorE]

When purchasing a camera that is around $150, what should I look for?

[twinkiedooter]

What are you going to be doing with the camera? Taking general pictures or close up or portraits? You need to get a good digital camera with one of those 2"X3" preview frames so you can see if you have enough light and the subject is properly positioned for your shot for starters. You also want to get as many pixels as possible as the more pixels the better quality the print will be. You can get a good digital camera with all these features for $150 or less.

I have one that has those features and it works just fine for me. It also has a built in flash. Don't buy the first one you see but shop around and see what you can find in that price range. I got my camera off Ebay for a song and it works just great. One thing though I will tell you, be sure to get the Lithium energizer batteries for the camera as if you use regular AAA batteries they won't last very long. A 4 pack costs around $10 but you only use 3 and they last about 200 pictures. My camera even has a 10 second video recording mode in it. I think I paid about $40 for it last year. Well worth it but I know cameras and knew what I was buying so I did get a good deal on it. It also has a zoom lens. It was used though and did not come with any instructions but I figured out the camera anyway and it works just great.

Also with digital cameras you can download the photos to your computer and crop them and make copies much, much cheaper than in the old days where you had to have film developed. If you don't have a computer that has a good printer, you can still save the pictures to a disc and take the disc to a place that does print digital pics. Or you can get a whole ream of photocopy printer paper for about $20 and print your own pictures if you have a color printer.

[jcdill]

Do you want a camera to "take pictures" or are you planning on learning more about photography? If all you want is to "take pictures", the most important features include face recognition, image stabilization (also called vibration reduction), and an easy-to-use menu system. If you want to know more about the art of photography, then it's important that the camera has modes for manual control (manual exposure, manual focus, saving the files in RAW format). There are some older Canon P&S models that you can load a hacked firmware on enabling hidden advanced features such as manual exposure and RAW modes. See:

Camera Hacks: Turn Your Point-and-Shoot into a Super-Camera

I disagree that you want as many pixels as possible. Any camera with 5 megapixels (or more) will produce about the same quality images when printed 4x6 to 8x10 in size, and very VERY few people ever print any larger. Cameras with "more megapixels" will just fill up the memory card faster, fill up your computer's hard drive faster. Most people don't print at all, and for online viewing and sharing via email even 5 MP is too much! However, ALWAYS shoot in the highest quality mode (largest filesize) and resize in the computer, rather than shoot in a lower quality mode. You don't want to take that once-in-a-lifetime shot only to later realize you shot it in a low quality mode and it can't be printed in a large size.