OT: Digital Cameras, Need good comparison websites Options

[Qarl]

Looking to get a new Digital Camera. I'd like to read some good comparisons of the different models.

One of the things that interest me is battery life. My current Nikon lasta about 24-40 pictures with flash on it's proprietary lithium ion battery. I have to carry 2 or 3 batteries around to fill up a 128 MB compact flash disk.

I am looking for...

4 to 5 mega pixels
Compact Flash
Point and shoot style with a good size.
Good flash coverage
Optical and digital zoom
Excellent battery life
Direct upload from camera to PC via cable(so I don't have to always remove Compact Flash) card.

I'd like to stick with Nikon, Canon, Olympus, or Minolta

$400 or less

I thought about getting the Canon Digital Rebel so I could use my Canon EOS AF lenses, but I couldn't justify the price or the big size.

[bperry]

A couple of other things you may want to consider:

Battery type: Custom vs AAA or AA.
I personally perfer to use AAA or AA batteries because
the AA/AAA NiMh batteries are WAY cheaper than the custom
batteries, plus you can use regular batteries in emergencies.
AA are better than AAA because they last much longer.
If you are going to remote places, the cost of the many custom
batteries you will need can easily be more than the cost of the
camera. (I'd rather spend the money on more media cards)

Foreign travel: Can your charger work on 220v?
(Seems most are very US centric)
Sure you can lug along a 220 to 110 adapter but its one
more thing to have to remember.
(It is easy to find universal AAA/AA chargers that work on
110, 220 and even use your cigarette lighter)

On the direct connect capabilitiy,
While it sounds great, most require custom software
and many are actually considerably slower than the
multicard readers that are readily available, directly supported
by Windows with no drivers, and cost under $20.
It literally only takes seconds to pop the card out of the camera
and put it into a reader. Well worth it once you start to
view or copy your images to your hard disk.

You may also want to consider the ability to record animations
with sound. Many support recording movies but don't include
the microphone so be careful.
It sounds hokey, but we used it alot when we were in the
Galapagos for capturing animals. In Peru it was great for talking
over pictures or capturing an animated image that is so vast that a photograph just couldn't capture it all. Even captured a few local
parades.

The one I ended up buying last fall was a
Samsung Digimax 360. Very small, under 8 oz with batteries,
2 AA BATs, USB, 3.2 Mpixel,
Takes pictures, sounds, audio attachments to pictures,
movies with sounds, and even
has movie playback with sounds. batteries lasted for hundreds of pictures.
The pictures we took with the Samsung Digital, when
developed, were actually much sharper and clearer
than the 35mm pictures taken with our Olympus IQ90 zoom.
For a few hundred bucks it worked great for us.

--- bill