I'm interested in buying a digital camera.. Mine is pretty old and I want a new /better one. (my old camera was SONY DSC-21)
Need an advice between Pentax Optio S4 or Canon Powershot A80.. I've read some reviews around but I trust u guys more (assuming some of you have knowledge in photography/cameras)
Thx guys 
Go with the Canon Powershot. The Pentax may look nice and feature great specs but the actual quality leaves much to be desired. When going for digital cameras, Nikon, Canon, Sony & Olympus are currently better than most other brands.
I dont know how into photography you are, but the pentax is by far the better camera here. It allows to get into the manual settings a little better. Plus it has a bigger CCD chip. Pentax makes very good cameras, they are related to yashica, which im sure you have heard of. Pentax lenses are often times much sharper than any of the others. Of course if you could find a sony with a nice carl zeiss lens, that would be the way to go
If you are just a point and shooter, than the canon should suit you just fine
heres some links if you want to compare
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0308/03082003canona80.asp
Have to disagree with you there Photo678. I own quite a number of digital cameras including the Pentax Optio S4 and like I said, the number of features and stuff you could do with the Pentax is great but unfortunately, the quality is not. If you take the photos under different lighting conditions, you will notice that the Pentax fails miserably compared with my Nikon, Olympus and Canon. (I can't compare with Sony because I don't own one.)
Edit: Did a search for some reviews and came out with this one for the Canon which include pros & cons.
I couldn't seem to find a similar review for the Pentax at the moment.
thats fair, of course i am mostly comparing this to 35mm world. so therefore maybe im a little biased
since my sisters bf has the a70 I recommend anything from canon, best damn cameras 
Photo678> yeah, that's one of the URL I went to when i did a review search on Google.
I'm not into photography, but I do want to have nice quality pictures under different lighting conditions. The one I have fails if I took a shot indoor with low/medium lightings. I want to print some photos so I guess I need a quite good quality camera.
So I guess, I should go into Powershot A80? I like the Pentax because it's so small in size and can fit in my pocket nicely. Haven't seen the size of A80 except in the pictures.
Thx for the quick replies anyway 
more discussions are appreciated since I'm still thinking to buy it in a few days/weeks time
well for the most part what your budget is will be the catcher here. All the nikon coolpix cameras are real nice. I own a fuji finepix3800. Its a decent camera, doesnt do well in low light at all, but the lense is sharp as a tack, and prints from my epson printer are phenomonal up to 11x14. it does terrible in low light situations mostly cause the af has a hard time finding anything. But for the type of stuff i do it doesnt really bother me at all. I mostly shoot with mulitple flashes and close up lenses. But check out the nikons nonetheless
I dont know if your in the states or not, but www.bhphoto.com has good prices
The Canon also supports conversion lenses (e.g. filters, telephoto lenses, etc), which would be cool if you want to venture into the world of more advanced photography. I'm waiting until closer to the Christmas season, then I'm getting an A70. I don't want to shell out the extra cash for the A80 (nor do I need the extra features). For my first digital camera, the A70 should be plenty.
--mgehrett--
Ugh.. What I want is actually taking picture some photos when I travelling around, watching some events, etc.. I'm not into digital photography stuffs
So I'm just a casual user of a digital camera.
Nevertheless, having a good camera does not hurt at all (good in the long run), though my budget is around that much (those two cameras)
I live in Australia btw.
Go for the Nikon Coolpix then. You can't go wrong with it.
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