Xmas is coming and friends keep asking me which digital camera they should get. With all the new babies arriving and missed photo opps everybody wants to join the digital bandwagon. There's no denying that digital photography has opened access to taking good photos to a lot of people who in the past had to settle for red-eye galore and fuzzy photos where have the people in them were blinking or drooling or looking the wrong way.

I keep steering people to the first digital I had - the Canon A75. Canon has been around a long time and they make a good product. This uses compact flash which is much cheaper than the memory stick Sony puts in their cameras. The A75 has a choice of shooting fully auto or prioritizing one setting or going fully manual. And unless you plan on making poster-sized prints of a small cropped area of an original the resolution is perfectly satisfactory - for the purposes of these people at least.

The A75 also has a pile of extras for those with a pile of cash - like the underwater housing. I've never used it but I suppose if you were going snorkelling or exploring sunken pirate treasure it would come in handy. If that's the case then let me know how it goes.

The scene modes - fast action, slow action, nighttime, fireworks, etc are kind of cool for learning how to set the manual features - check and see what the camera would do and then next time set it yourself. Or not.

The camera is simple enough that kids I've given it to have had no trouble using it or holding it. It's compact (but not that small that you'd sit on it) and light and fits in a standard case. Pick up some rechargeable batteries, a 512 or 1G compact flash card and if you're really gungho a tripod and cable release and you should be all set until you're ready to upgrade to an SLR.