Breakin it down (expert input needed)

[radke22]

I am in the market for a new camera, thing is, I'm not really buying it for me to use. Picture your on a remote north shore stream. After battling a bruiser 30" wild steelhead It's photo time. You don't want to keep the fish out of water a second longer than you have to. Your budy is the one taking the picture and you need the picture to turn out great (he doesn't know squat except he can see you through the little hole).

This is my dilema; I need a user friendly, simple, compact camera just for outdoor shots ranging from midnight, low light, sun reflecting off water, and other outdoor shots.

I highly considerd the Fuji finepix F30 with 3200 ISO, but the new Finepix F40fd has 8.3mp (still 2000 ISO) compared to the 6.6 in the F30.

I'm not stuck on fuji, the main thing for me is color quality/low light resolution (sick of greyness) and portabiity. I'm all ears guys/gals

[Steve Foss]

I'm not very knowledgeable about the various point-and-shoot models and their characteristics, so I'll only talk a bit about the megapixels.

Don't let the megapixel count dissuade you from the F30 if that's your preference. From 6.6 to 8.3 megapixels sounds like a significant jump, but it's really not. I've made excellent prints from a 6 Mp sensor up to 20x30 inches, and an 8 Mp sensor won't let you go much larger than that. In fact, image quality may suffer at 8.3 Mp. That's because packing more and more pixels into those small sensors on point-and-shoots means you'll get more digital noise with the 8.3 Mp than the 6.6 Mp, especially at medium and high iso.