December 7, 2006: Do you read the NY Times on Thursdays? That’s the day they run the Circuits column in their technology section, and there’s always something of interest there.

Today there’s an article called “More Camera, More Style, Less Price.” I love the opening:

As you grow older, you begin to ponder the eternal questions. What is the meaning of life? What happens to our souls after death? And how much digital camera can you get for $300?

All right, that last question isn’t so much an eternal question as an annual one. I’ve been asking it in this column every year since 2001. And the answer is always the same: a lot more than last year.

This year, 11 companies submitted their best cameras with a street price under $300. The contenders are the Canon A630, the Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z700, the Fuji FinePix F30, the Hewlett-Packard Photosmart R827, the Kodak EasyShare C875, the Nikon Coolpix S7c, the Olympus Stylus 740, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX3, the Pentax Optio A20, the Samsung Digimax NV3 and the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W100.

The article goes into depth about all these models, offering pros and cons for most. But I’ll kill the suspense and list the big winner here:

The photo-quality winner is the big, homely Canon A630. Not only are its colors the truest and its details the sharpest, but it has more photographic features than any other model (optical viewfinder, autofocus lamp, manual controls, and a tie for biggest sensor). It also has the only 4X zoom in this roundup, plus the only flip-out, rotating screen that lets you shoot over people’s heads or below waist level.

Go Canon, go Canon, go, go, go Canon!

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