My son wants a camera

[Grandpaw]

This is a bit out of my area of knowledge. He would like a point and shoot that will work well in low light, be water proof, have a good zoom for taking pictures of his family. Any suggestions that you can suggest for me to check out would be very much appreciated. I am not familiar with point and shoot cameras. Preferably below $500 if possible but if there is a reason to go higher let me know. I will say that he is not a photographer but just someone that likes to get pictures of the family, Jeff

[SmartWombat]

What is more important, waterproof or low light?
Waterproof, rugged cameras tend to be designed for outdoors - where there's plenty of light.
Low light cameras tend to be designed for indoors, where there's not much water.

http://reviews.photographyreview.com...igital-cameras

[Photo-John]

That's a tough list of requests, Jeff. The waterproof part is especially difficult since waterproof cameras always have a smaller zoom range and somewhat comrpomised image quality. My recommendation would be to let go of the waterproof feature and go with a pocket superzoom camera instead. Pocket superzooms fit in a pants pocket and have a minimum 10x zoom range. They aren't at the top of the image quality heap but some of them are pretty good - especially the Nikon and Canon models with backlit CMOS sensors. Here's a link to my Pocket Superzoom Camera Guide. It needs to be updated but it will still offer some great information on what to look for and the cameras are all pretty recent:

Pocket Superzoom Camera Guide >>

I also think it's important that you lower your son's low light expectations. I think this is one of the areas where people have very unrealistic expectations about what's possible. Some cameras are definitely better than others but no point-and-shoot camera is really good - especially not without some technique to go with it.

If you still want to take a look at waterproof cameras, here's a link to my waterproof cameras guide. I just updated it a few weeks ago so it's totally current:

Outdoor And Waterproof Cameras Guide >>

Hope that helps

[jean mark]

give him a fake camera

[Grandpaw]

Thanks Paul and John for your replies. I will show him your information and that will help him decide, Jeff