A couple weeks ago the wife and I took a vacation to our old stomping grounds, Northern California. It was fantastic. I always bring my camera along, and I always come back with tons of pictures – yes I’m one of ‘those people’ who loves taking pictures.

I used to own a (manual) film SLR and did darkroom work in high school, but I would never bring an SLR anywhere, so I don’t even bother buying one – the best camera is the one you actually bring with you.

In today’s world of fully automatic point and shoots, it amazes me that I used to use a camera which not only required expensive film processing, time-consuming film loading and winding, and manual focusing – but that I had to set the shutter speed and aperture manually using a very general light meter in the viewfinder. Sheesh, its wonder I took any pictures at all, never mind that half of them would come out exposed and focused correctly.

Well, during our vacation it was obvious we had screwed up the lens on our Canon SD800 IS somehow, as it was foggy inside the lens and the lens cover would not pop open automatically. This kinda sucked, as the camera is not that old, but I took it as a sign to get a shiny new camera.

I love shopping for electronics online. I took my time reviewing all the new point and shoot digital cameras out there, and narrowed them down to a handful.

This was somewhat easy, as there is one important feature I *must* have on a digital camera, but it is pretty rare. That feature is a wide-angle lens. If you have ever tried to take a picture of a room indoors, or of a large group of people, and you had to move far back from the subject or simply could not fit the entire subject into the frame, these are the same circumstances where you want a wide angle lens.

Most digital camera zoom lenses start at a 35-mm equivalent focal length of 35mm, which is fairly wide, especially compared to the ’standard’ fixed 50mm lenses film SLR’s used to ship with. However, by bumping the wide end down to just 28mm, you really make the lens more flexible – and its not even something you need to think about, just leave the lens wide open and shoot as you normally would, you probably wont even notice the difference.

However, you will start to notice the difference when shooting groups of people up close and shooting landscapes, etc – you will be pleased with how easy it is to ‘fit everything’ into the frame.

That said, I made a short list of wide-angle lens digital point and shoots that looked interesting:

1. The Canon SD870 IS.
This is the new 8 megapixel version of my SD 800.

It has a wide-angle optical image stabilized 28mm 3.8x optical lens, and a large 3″ LCD.

This new Canon also comes not only in the traditional silver, but in a nice black-accented model as well.

2. The Fujifilm Finepix F100fd.
This is a new Fujifilm camera which not only has a great 28-140mm wide-angle zoom lens, but is also specially adept at shooting in low light and ‘high dynamic range’ lighting situations where there is detail in both very bright and very dark portions of the subject, which presents exposure problems for most cameras.

3. Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5A
This camera was VERY tempting. It’s a tremendous value considering it is an ultraportable digital camera with a 10x wide-angle zoom, going all the way from 28mm-280mm, which is just outstanding – there is really no other camera like it in its class.

4. Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX500S
Similar to #3, but instead of sporting a 10x zoom, it has a 5x zoom, but can also capture 1280×720 HD Video.

I should also note that as of 7 megapixels, I really don’t shop for megapixels anymore. 7 is more than I need, as I mostly display on my monitor, and never print – 7 mp is fine for the occasional print. In fact, I would rather avoid a high-megapixel camera as the files just eat up hard drive space (unless you crank the resolution down in the camera).

In the end, as the title foretells, I chose the Canon SD870 IS. There are several reasons for this:

1. The camera gets excellent reviews for virtually every feature – photo quality, video quality, build quality, and ease-of-use.
2. I am familiar with Canons and know I will not be disappointed, if nothing else.
3. The price was good.

As for the features on the other cameras:

1. Early reviews were mixed on the Fujifilm Finepix F100fd. There were certainly some really interesting sample images taken with the camera, but there wasn’t enough information on it from enough reviewers yet for me to make a good decision on it.

2. Although the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5A had that zoom lens which was just amazing, it was clear that the average photo out of the camera was not on par with the Canon, plus it was a little larger and the video was not as good.

3. Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX500S
The only real reason to choose this camera was the HD video mode – but if there is one thing that is clear from comparing digital camera video, it is that resolution is largely meaningless. Yes, the video that comes out of this camera is high-resolution, but the overall quality of the video is much less impressive than the Canon. The Canon’s video is superb. and the sound is excellent.

So far, the camera has lived up to its promise. Its takes the same outstanding photographs I have come to expect from my Canons, and has the best video of any camera I’ve used. This model also has the newer 3″ LCD display, which is just fantastic for reviewing pictures and showing them to friends.

I would have loved to try out the HDR features of the Fuji, and the ultra-zoom features of the Panasonic, but in the end, I just want to be able to have a camera I can take everywhere and know the pictures are going to turn out great every time – which is really the best feature of them all.