Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 850

I've got this HP as a gift. I like how it looks and handles in my hands. It has a similar feel to my pentax SLRs. I have tried Sony Cyber Shot DSC-P9 and was really disappointed. Sony's lens was way too slow with f/2.8-5.6--this forces the slower shutter speeds w/o flash and dim pictures w/flash. HP's lens is fast and crispy. My indoor pictures with flash came alive even at tele-zoom setting. I believe the lens is made by Fuji. 8x optical zoon is excellent. Need a tripod from time to time, though. Bettery life is acceptable w/o the back LCD on. Image quality is very good. Macro function is very good. Built quality and heft is just about right. Focus can be quite tricky for the film SLR users. But once you understand how this camera's focus mechanics work, you can minimize the focus delay and frequency of the out-of-focus situations. Lack of the fast burst mode is disappointing, but with its limited auto-focus capability (for other cameras as well), it wouln't make much difference anyway. I guess you need to upgrade your camera to the Digital SLR level for this capability. Limited ISO setting--it only has 100 or 200. But then, anything above may be too noisy for this price range. HP did a nice job with this one. Overall, a very good pakage. I intend to stick with it until I get a Pentax digital SLR. For those who are looking for better focusing capability, you may want to look into Kodak EasyShare DX-6490, FinePix S5000 and Olympus C-750.

Great Optics--fast and crispy. They seem to emphasize contrast over sharpness. Very good image quality. Nice handling and good look.

Tricky focus--but then this is not an SLR! Lack of manual focusing function.

Fuji FinePix 2800 Sony Cyber Shot DSC-P9

No experience yet.

In general, I am pretty happy with the camera. I do not use it for critical photos, but for getting snapshots, it is great! I actually purchased it for making photos for eBay, but also like it for grabbing pictures. It handles well, and produces good images. The color balance is quite good, and the resolution is decent. I chose it in part because of the size of the image, and the length of the zoom. I looked for a camera with a zoom that had a large optical range.

Decent image quality, a good lens, compact, and decent battery life.

The flash is very prone to red eye, the exposure is not always the best, although I can tune it up very easily, and I find the lag between pressing the shutter release and the actual firing to be VERY annoying.

None

Not used.