Best digital cameras for Christmas

Round-up by: Rich Trenholm

Last updated: 07 Nov 2008

Christmas is coming -- are you feeling festive? In fact it's been coming for three months, if you believe the decorations in the local shopping centre. But as the big day approaches and thoughts turn to presents, we take a look at a selection of the best compact digital cameras for Christmas.

Let's start at the budget end of the scale, for those of you with kids or if you're just a bit cheap. The Nikon Coolpix S520 is a straightforward point-and-shoot at an affordable price. There's not much in the way of features, but the novice photographer will be happy with the images.

Next let's pick the most stylish camera for the shallow and fashion-obsessed among your family or friends, to look good when they whip it out at the Christmas party. The IXUS range is synonymous with style, and we've plumped for the subtly curvaceous Canon Digital IXUS 80 IS.

When you've taken all those pictures of the Christmas parties and presents, you'll need plenty of room to store them. The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T700 packs 4GB of onboard memory, so as well as saving loads of pictures, you also cut down on the cost of buying memory cards. Bargain.

Finally, what's our pick of the best compact camera of the year? There can be only one, and it's the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX500. Maybe your prospective present-receiver has moved on a bit from compact point-and-shoots and wants to develop their photography. Or maybe your Dad just wants lots of options he can fiddle about with even if he doesn't know what they do. A touchscreen-controlled point-and-shoot with a wealth of manual options, the FX500 also has the usual Panasonic iA automatic mode, so if everyone's stuffed with turkey, the camera will do all the hard work for you.

The weather outside may be frightful, but with these winter warmers turning up in stockings, Christmas could be very merry indeed.