Another wonderful entry-level camera from Canon, the 1000D combines all the latest features — including Live View, dust reduction and lens-based stabilisation — with superb picture quality to produce an extremely appealing package.

Canon's A570IS is a brilliant advanced camera, combining exceptional image quality with all the features you'd expect. It packs in two technologies, image stabilisation and face detect, that are sure to make an impression on consumers.

This is a great 5 megapixel camera, highly recommended unless you want a lighter model that sits comfortably in your pocket. Its image quality problems can be overcome with a little tweaking.

A wonderful camera that looks good, feels good and takes great shots. Highly recommended.

Another great Powershot entry by Canon, the A700 fulfils all the requirements of an advanced model, offering lots of functions, superb image quality, a big zoom and decent battery life.

Another fantastic compact from Canon, the IXUS 980 IS takes everything that was great about past units and adds manual shooting modes, a very smooth design and a higher resolution sensor, making this one of the best high-end compacts on the market.

If picture quality is paramount, you are not going to find a much better point and shoot than the A620.

A highly recommended purchase. Although the image quality was not quite up to what we were expecting from an 8 megapixel sensor, for the price it still blew the competition away.

An absolutely brilliant ultra zoom model that combines a 12X zoom lens with exceptional picture quality and all the usual functionality.

Sony's Cyber-shot DSCW1 has most of what you could wish for in a compact, easy-to-use point-and-shoot.

If you want a carry-around camera capable of handling a wide range of tasks, including good-quality video, the S2IS is well worth a look.

This very nice camera package would set you back a fair bit of money, but would be worth it for many people.