I am looking at getting a decent camera and wanted to know what others have.

It would be just chucked in a bag for when I go biking or running.

Needs to be sturdy, take the odd knock or two and ideally be at least splashproof if not waterproof. On top of that I don't want bright yellow cover and I want it to take decent pictures.

Be nice if it was under £150 quid.

I would also like the moon on a stick but would prefer the camera first.

Anyone got some good recommendations?

Can't remember the model number, but there's a new Fujifilm that's waterproof & seems fairly knock proof. You can buy rubber skins for them as well that must help a bit to protect them.
You'd know it as soon as you see them as they are quite 'funky' although they do sell them in black.

They've got rubberised buttons/loads of features & are waterproof. Mate of mine works for Fujifilm & we took a couple of them to Spain with us this yr. They took decent enough pics, even under water – they have a special 'underwater mode'.

Can be had for perhaps a little bit over £150

I always found the Sony CybershotU to be the perfect trail camera. Tiny little thing. Unfortunately not made anymore, available on e-bay though. Only 2 or 3 megapixels, which good enough if you just want them on your PC/internet. Probably only cost you 50 quid.

Stumpy I have googled them and a good shout. Bordering on the too "funky" but the black or non neon colours look alright.

Mackem, mates got one of those. Know they are pretty hard wearing camera's but not really any better than my 5mp phone/camera.

Anyone had/has one of those olympus camera's that had the tv ad?

Get the Pentax w60 rather than the fuji. I just went through this process and the pentax has more features and more importantly a better lens. That said, all compact cameras are crap for biking unless it's very bright and the object isn't moving very fast (unless you're willing to put up with silly amounts of noise).

Canon Powershot? Mines an A720IS and has caught just about every photo in my Flickr pages from long exposure night shots in the alps to 1/64000th strobe shots of flying metal during machining. Seems to have impressive colour rendition and good focus. Only real issue is has is noise, but thats only compared to a DSLR, in comparison with normal similar price P&S's its pretty damned amazing. Also included the CHDK firmware hack (non-destructive) to get masses of extra comlex features, should you want them.

Samples:

1/64000th strobe shots of flying metal during machining

coffeeking…..really?! Presumably that's the strobing at 1/64000 of a second, not the shutter? Even the high end DSLRs only have max shutter speeds of 1/8000 of a second.

i'm going for this…

http://www.plemix.com/camera-panasonic-ts1-camera

hi def video – strapped to helmet sounds good to me!

Stumpy – electronic shutter on P&S cameras, not physical like sexy DSLRs – shutter speed is limited only by the electronics response/clock time. The CHDK firmware mod allows anything from 64 second to 1/64000th on the Powershots. I got my powershot a couple of years ago, bought a 20D recently but still use the powershot for some technical photos!

Here's the one in question…lathe turning at 3000rpm

Holy poo….that's well impressive!

I know that the shutters on compacts are electronic so perhaps less 'limiting' than SLR shutters. But how do you access that shutter speed? Does the camera allow that directly? Is it through the firmware mod you mention?

My admittedly quite old Konica Minolta Z3 I think only has a max shutter speed of 1/1000 of a sec available (even though it can probably physically/electronically do a similar thing to your image).

It's all in the firmware, it gives direct access to the DIGIC processor in the camera via a set of menus:

This allows you to override just about anything you can think of. Also allows you to write your own scripts for things like exposure bracketing, time lapse, motion detection (handy for lightning shots) etc. Those guys know their stuff!

I'm not sure the cam actually can physically get as low as 1/64kth but I've not devised a way of testing just how low it can go, but that is the limit you're able to request of the processor. It also allows much higher isos (though noise becomes unbearable), dark-frame noise removal on long exposures, full LIVE RGB histogram display on screen while shooting, over and under-exposed areas flashed on screen during shooting etc. It really does work a charm!

Loooooong exposure night shots (32 seconds on this one IIRC, I have a 64 second shot where you can see the starts move!)

That's great!! Looks well useful! Makes your compact a much better tool – just shows how much the manufacturers restrict stuff with s/w.
I seem to remmeber being told about some Russian bloke on the internet who has broken into the Nikon SLR firmware & can upgrade the budget cameras to give them the same features as the much pricier models.

The night shot looks good. I seem to remember having movement in the stars for night shots even as short as 30s. It's quite annoying, as it looks like camera shake!
Suprising that they move that much in what seems to be a short space of time!

Coffeking – Excellent pictures there.Im looking for a trail camera meself but Im not as camera literate as you are. To get the pictures that you have, is it a case of point and click or is there a lot of setting up the camera first? i.e. Would your camera be suitable for a novice like meself? Also you have a picture titled "Carron Res". How did you get the picture in a rectangular shape like that (if that makes sense?)Would I need something like Photoshop to achieve that? Any help greatly appreciated.

Our Olympus waterproof thingy is taking a battering and still going. A Stylus 850SW. Lots of example photos on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/cameras/olympus/s850sw/

foolishmiracles – cheers, I'm learning all the time – it's quite fun. The thing with the A720 is that while you can stick it in auto mode and take birthday snaps and quick trail shots, use the basic features like face recognition, basic zoom etc, you can switch into full manual if you like and individually set everything, ISO, aperture, exposure time, focus, white balance and then add on the CHDK option for even more if you need to later. I started out about 2 years ago knowing only how to point and press.

If you look in my flickr, pretty much any of the alps 2008 images, biking in may, and a few others can be achieved by a relative novice as they were almost all on auto or just a few manual settings that have very obvious effects when changed.

The top 4 photos here were pretty much point and click, the bottom two of the top 4 (if that makes any sense) were full auto, the top two were shot on manual (I selected a low ISO for low noise, then decided on an aperture and speed setting based on (not much) experience).

The machining one was full auto with more settings tweaked in menus and the night one was again lots of settings tweaked, on a tripod and took about 15 takes to get right, but really not hard when you know what you're looking for.

While there are a few people on the board that will be able to instruct you better than I, if you drop me an email I'll be happy to give you a brief rundown, or point you to links/books. Ultimately a decent (IMO Canon mid-high end) P&S with full manual mode control will do just about anything an amateur could hope for, until they become quite serious. Having recently gone DSLR I've found I'm re-learning a lot as things like aperture never made a huge difference to the point and shoot, but to my SLR they vastly change the outcome of the photo due to secondary effects. I only went DSLR for the noise issue, shooting at 5 frames a second (impossible on most point and shoots) and the nice sound of the shutter 🙂

Read this before you do anything

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q209waterproofgroup/page17.asp

I have an older olympus 850SW, its ok, pics are fine for sticking on facebook/flickr/etc. Just rigged this up for it…

I wouldn't mind something with image stabilisation though, the video's get quite bouncy on anything other than smooth trails.