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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kittykat23uk" data-source="post: 1200781" data-attributes="member: 55291">Hi Steve,I would second what Niels said. It really depends on your budget, what sort of quality results you are looking for and how much weight you are prepared to carry around. I use a Panasonic FZ18 which is really lightweight and have managed to get some really nice photos with it. See my sig for details. You can extend the range with a 1.7x teleconverter (I use an Olympus TCON17). Expect to pay around £250 for the camera and another £50 for a TCON plus about £25 for an adapter to marry the two. The benefits other than it being so portable are that you can go from 28mm wide angle all the way up to 500 mm (and even further with the TCON and using the extended zoom options). It does have a burst mode (though nothing compared to a good DSLR), video recording, heaps of scene modes and creative functions like different aspect ratios, and its macro capability isn't half bad either (you can get add on lenses for supermacro work too). The main downside to these cameras is the noisy sensor, which means you should try as far as possible to shoot in good light and at 100 ISO whenever you can. That said, I have taken many shots at higher ISO speed and printed them out and the results have been quite passable. I also digiscope with a fuji Finepix F31FD and a kowa scope when I need more range (but this doesn't happen very often these days!). The fuji that Niels mentioned probably outdoes the FZ18 in terms of the noise, but I hear it has a lot of chromatic abberation problems (something which Panasonic seem to reduce in camera during Jpeg processing). Hope this helpsJo</blockquote>

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