have you looked at the Lumix range? Steve has one of those and it's bloody lovely, it has 16:9 aspect ratio option as well...

The LX1 is the one Steve has, I'm seeing it for about £300 on the Jessops website...so it should be easy to find it cheaper than that.

cool, threre's a branch of jessops in carmarthen where I can go and maul one, what's the build quality like?

feels rock solid, though admitedly I've only handled it a couple of times if I remember correctly the entire case is metal

just been checking the lumix - looks good and I like the leica lens - got to be good quality, have to say i prefer the looks of the casio though, but beauty is only skin deep...

I have to say, I've used about 9 different digital cameras over the years & I am 100% happy with my current one Konica / Minolta Z3 Dimage. It has all the flexibility of a full on SLR, or the ability to point & click, a good Optical 12x Zoom and is small enough to fit in most mini cam spaces (just remember the lens cap), the lens extends when you turn it on. I just whack a 512Mb sd card in it & snap away all day at top quality (2.5Mb JPEGs) then you can zoom into the good bits at your leisure at home. Get a good supply of NiMH rechargeables though - whichever one you buy. Oh, and Jessops are fab in my opinion. Happy hunting.

thanks for that judge - a bizarre looking piece of kit if ever there was one! I will check it out, but it's looking a bit on the big side from the pics - I've decided that if i'm going compact then size is the issue, but i like the idea of more control - I had am Olympus Comedian till my wife "inherited" it, but found it very limited.

just checked the konica/minolta website - apparently this model is discontinued!