Stories by: Bruce Buckman

If you're looking for more features in a slightly larger package then Canon's new PowerShot S80 might suit. The new top-of-the-line model in the S range, the S80 offers 8 megapixel resolution with a 3.6x zoom lens that boasts a useful 35mm equivalent range of 28-100mm. On the back is a large 2.5-inch LCD and you also get a simple optical viewfinder, should bright sunlight prove too much for the LCD.

If you say it fast enough, the price of this unit can almost sound like a reasonable amount of money. For most of us, however, that kind of cash represents a substantial investment in a piece of home theatre equipment, so obviously, whatever the toy, it had better be worth it.

Digital video may be here to stay but that doesn't mean that analogue video is dead - at least not yet. Most of us still have VHS tapes littering our bookshelves, and some of us (shock horror) haven't yet replaced that old video handycam with a modern DV version.

Before rushing out to buy a new digital handycam, take a moment to consider whether you want to spend all that money on a format that could soon be consigned to the dustbin of history. Which format? Why, digital video (DV), of course. Higher resolution formats, in the form of high-definition video (HDV), are here now. Many new digital TV sets ship with HD modes built in and now HD-capable handycams are arriving too.

While most of us can only dream of owning a high-end digital SLR like the Canon EOS 1Ds Mk II, for professional photographers the high price tag is more than repaid in the extra power and reliability these cameras provide. While Canon owns the lion's share of the professional market, Nikon is making a very strong bid for photographers' attentions with its latest, the D2X.

Big-zoom, image-stabilised cameras are a hot item. While previously we have looked at the Panasonic Lumix FZ5 and the Sony CyberShot H1, this time round it's Canon's latest, the PowerShot S2 IS.

MP3 music; MPEG and DivX/XviD movies; digital photo collections--these manifestations of the digital age have entered most of our lives through our PCs, not our home entertainment centres. But recognising that many people want to access their digital files from the comfort of the lounge, vendors have been trying to find ways to let us do just that, without setting up a dedicated Media Centre PC in our living rooms.

Kodak's range of Printer Docks are thermal dye printers (also known as dye-sublimation printers). The result is an image that is essentially indistinguishable from prints from a commercial photo lab; detail is superb.

Lexmark's P315 is a three-colour thermal inkjet printer that uses a standard Lexmark tricolour cartridge. Unusually, it has no PC connectivity options at all; to print from the P315 you either insert your flash memory card in its card reader slots or connect a camera to the PictBridge port. If you want to print an image from your archives, you'll have to shift it on to a memory card first.

A member of Sony's line of dye-sublimation photo printers, the DPP-FP50 is a sleek little unit designed to look stylish yet unobtrusive in your living room. And why would you want it in your lounge? Because it features an AV port and a remote control, which let you hook it up to your TV to turn it into your own photo lab. With built-in software you can do basic editing and enhancements, such as red-eye reduction, cropping, rotating and adjusting brightness and sharpness, on the TV screen. You can also add text and fancy borders, if you wish, and run slide shows and then print any photo in the slide show with the remote.

When it comes to digital handycams, the tag 3CCD usually means high end and high price. The Panasonic NV-GS150 is unusual in being a 3CCD camera at such a low price.