Recommend a camera please, mid-low $200 budget

I'm looking for a digital camera that is not just a point and click, and not one with dinky manual focus buttons. I want a camera that has a focus ring or something thats also good like some well made buttons(not buttons that are so tiny) Know what I mean?

I would like something thats in the mid $200 but I would always prefer it closer to $200. I would like a D-SLR but I can't ask for something like that for xmas because of the cost, I think I could get away with a mid $200 non-DSLR. I've always liked photography, and see stuff I would like to take pictures of. I want to take some up close pictures of things in the yard. I'm in south Florida and we have lots of rare fruit trees and flowers I would like to take pictures of. I want to manually focus the camera to blur out everything but the subject I am focusing on with a lot of the pictures I plan to take. I also might be going camping in Georgia and would like a nice camera to take.

I'm looking at this: http://b2b.sony.com/Solutions/product/DSC-H3/B


What do you have or recommend me get and any other thoughts you would like to add are welcome!


BTW, for the mods/admins I would like to tell you the site never sent my registration email to my comcast email address(yes I checked the spam folder). So I had to use my gmail account to register.

Looks like a good choice but I notice the price is above your budget range. However, you won't get what you want for that budget either so might be time to save some pennies.
Read all the reviews you can and then shop but make sure you read the dealer reviews before you buy.

Going strictly by your budget, I saw a "Fry's" ad today for a Canon A570IS for only $179. It may not suit your requirements, but I believe it is a good camera.

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Originally Posted by Frog

Looks like a good choice but I notice the price is above your budget range. However, you won't get what you want for that budget either so might be time to save some pennies.
Read all the reviews you can and then shop but make sure you read the dealer reviews before you buy.

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The sony one I posted goes for about $260. The price you see on the sony website is just retail. $260 is about the limit.

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Originally Posted by Rocket_Scientist

Going strictly by your budget, I saw a "Fry's" ad today for a Canon A570IS for only $179. It may not suit your requirements, but I believe it is a good camera.

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I second Rocket-Scientist's Canon PowerShot A-Series recommendation. The A-Series cameras aren't super glamorous, but they pack a lot of real camera functionality into a relatively inexpensive package. They've been among the most popular digital cameras on this site since they were first introduced. The have full manual exposure controls so you can get serious about your photography and learn a ton with them. An A-Series Canon would be an excellent prelude to a digital SLR. And the A570 IS also has image stabilization. So you'll be able to get sharper images in more varied light conditions. For $179 it's really a hell of a lot of camera. The last A-Series camera I reviewed was the 10-megapixel A640. You can read that review to learn more about the A-Series cameras and why I think they're a great camera and a great buy.

Canon PowerShot A640 Pro Review >>

I wouldn't actually recommend the A640 first, though. I'd happily trade the 10-megapixel camera for an 8-megapixel camera with image stabilization.

For comparable cameras, also look at the Olympus SP-Series cameras, and the Sony W-Series. Those are full-featured compact digital cameras that you can do serious photography with.

I like Canon series, I have got my new Canon PowerShot SD1000 for a few months, It has excellent image quality, solid build quality, speedy performance, optical viewfinder; face detection, etc. Here are some more features and reviews:
http://reviews.digitaltrends.com/review4433.html
It works great for me. And it dropped for only $165 at
http://www.**********.com/viewtopic.php?t=33896