Back in 2005, before a trip to Italy with my mom for work, I purchased a new digital camera.  After perusing Best Buy’s offerings, I decided upon a Sony DSC-V1.  It’s a five megapixel camera with a 4X optical zoom.  I could use it in fully automatic mode or manually control settings.  I like that capability, but, frankly, I don’t typically use it.  Mostly because I don’t use manual mode often enough, when I need it, I’m too rusty on what does what to get it right.  It also has nightframing and nightshot modes — which have been fun to play around with.  It has a built-in flash as well as a hotshoe for an accessory flash.  All-in-all, it’s been a solid, capable camera.

I noticed when I was taking kitten videos that the videos weren’t as high a resolution as I’d like — probably because it does MPEG instead of the more currently acceptable 720 or 1080p.  Which has gotten me to wondering if maybe I should consider refreshing my camera.

I’ve starting browsing around.  I like Sony, but Memory Stick isn’t as popular a storage device as Sony might have hoped it to become. Even Sony is dual slotting their newer cameras with SD in addition to Memory Stick.

Fourteen to sixteen megapixels seems to be the comfortably priced camera capability.  I prefer an optical zoom.  I want it to be able to take HD, 1080 videos.  I don’t do videos very often, but why not be able to capture the current standard if I do?  Mostly, I’m interested in JPEG, but I understand RAW is the real standard to be using, so maybe it would be nice to have that capability, if it didn’t jack up the price too much.

Image stabilization would be nice — I tend to take a lot of indoor pictures, and I don’t always want to use flash.  I doubt I’ll ever use the hotshoe flash capability, so if it doesn’t have one, that’s ok.  I still would like to be able to use manual or automatic modes, recognizing I’m mostly going to use automatic. When might I need or want GPS tagging capability?

I have  no experience with Fujifilm, but this model has just been or is just being released:  FinePix F500EXR I wonder if I’d be happy with it?  I like wide angle as well as telephoto capability.

Any thoughts or suggestions?  I’ve had one vote for Canon’s SX30IS, but I’ve read about some concerns with it’s low light handling.  For what it’s worth, the Sony was criticized for it’s low light handling as well.  I’ve lived with it, but would like something better.