Hello all, I am new to these forums, and new to photography, and cameras.

I am in need of a pretty "decent" digital camera, and my budget is about $200-250, but I really prefer $200, but the less the better.

I care the most about picture quality, I don't really care if it can take good video at good fps,
this is not important to me.

I also have photoshop to help edit my photos.

But this is what I care about the most.

Most of my picture will not be huge, with the exception of an occasional 1680*1050 wallpaper I would like to capture. How good overall would a camera at this price range capture photos?

I am confused about camera specs, but I know MP are not the only thing. I heard light ISO is important, and that 1600 is pretty good, and 400 is bad. So I need a camera that is not too expensive, but good for what it is.

Thank you.

Well, I can't really think of a good P&S camera since I usually don't use those. My wife has one of the Nikon P&S & we're been very happy with it.

In regards to ISO, the lower the better. The higher the number (ISO) the more "noise" you'll get in those photos. For my wife's camera, anything over ISO 400 looks really noisy.

Hopefully someone who uses P&S camera will chime in with their knowledge

BTW, Welcome to the site!

I myself use a fuji finepix s5200, looks like a dslr, takes xd card memory, iso goes from 60-1600, you can shoot raw or jpeg, has stabilisation setting, although you do have to hold the camera somewhat steady for this to take effect, it has the bells and whistles of night shots, portrait, landscape and so on ect ect, it has great dof settings, and takes great pics, in my opinion its a great camera, takes 4 AA batteries which last quite some time, if you shoot in high speed mode with the caf it will use the batteries quicker. but overhaul a fantastic camera, i paid $300 for mine a couple of years ago you should be able to get one for $200 now, iam upgrading to a nikon soon, but i'll deffo be keeping the s5200 as a back-up,
Happy shooting
Blu

is this a good camera?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/B000NK6J6Q/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_top/105-4100185-5338054?ie=UTF8&n=502394&s=photo#customerReviews

You really can't go wrong with the Canon Powershot series. I'd say yes.

I think Canon Powershot series are great options. Recently I just got my Canon PowerShot SD1000, and I have some good experience on the picture quality and video effects. I got it at a pretty low deal price of $191. This is some specs and user reviews:
http://reviews.digitaltrends.com/review4433.html
It's the deal I used, maybe you can try
http://www.**********.com/searchdeals.php?deal_id=62527