With a little one on the way and my increased media creation, I decided to dump my 2.1 Megapixel camera and jump up to the 7.1 range. After looking at many Web sites to determine my best tack, including Digital Photography Review , CNET, and www.digitalphotography.com, I was down to two brands: Canon or Nikon.

Good glass goes a long way in image quality and both companies have a good reputation and history of quality. I looked at the Canon S70 and the Nikon Cool Pix 7800 and 7600. After my Web research, it was off to the local camera store to get my hands on the cameras and play with features.

A big deciding factor for any camera for me was shutter speed. After the ten second pause between photos in my last camera I felt the action was slipping away and my ability to get the shot was lost in the waiting. Both cameras offered a sports mode that allowed me to achieve this end so I now moved to other factors including size and ease of use. Again the size of all the cameras was expected, so it came down to ease of use. I used the ultimate usability factor my wife. I showed her the Nikon and that was that. After looking at the crisp clear images and the very nice macro shots of her wedding ring, we decided that the extra money for the 7800, while just a bit thinner and a cool black color, was just not worth it and settled on the Nikon 7600.

Here are the specifications:

• 7.1 Effective Megapixels
• High Quality 3x Optical Zoom-
• Nikkor Lens with ED Glass
• Large, Bright 1.8 inch LCD
• Exclusive Nikon In-Camera Red-Eye Fix™
• Nikon’s D-Lighting
• Long Battery Life
• 16 Scene Modes
• Voice Memo Mode
• Face Priority AF
• Help Button
• Shoot close-ups 1.6 inches
• Movie Mode with Electronic Vibration Reduction takes QuickTime movies with sound
• 14.5 MB of Internal Memory

With my new Nikon camera and my Flickr account, I have been really enjoying the ability to just hold down the button and take 30 pictures to get just the right one. This has been a good buy and I would give the camera an 8.8 out of 10. The only thing that seems to be a negative is the battery life which seems to be an issue for most digital cameras.

[John Anthony Hartman]