Recommendations-Digital camera for my son?

[canay]

My son has been very "impressed" with my digital scrapbook layouts that I send him. He wants a digital camera for his birthday so he can email pictures to me from college. I have the Canon Powershot G2. He wants something less complicated than what I have. He also wants it smaller so it could fit in his pocket. He is a college kid who wants to throw a camera in his pocket and take to the beach and get pics of he and his buddies surfing. Sorta get the idea...

Any recommendations of what would be a good camera for him?

TIA

Canay

[Fidelis]

As I've said on previous threads I favour Fuji finepix cameras just because I've always had great results from them but this is just personal preference. There are tons of choices out there on the market for you but I don't know what specific specs your looking at. I can however highly recommend Fuji finepix f410, its a small camera that can fit in a pocket, very user friendly, its got 3.1M effective pixels & has the capacity of 6M output, it also has a 3x optical zoom & a 4.4 Digital zoom. If your looking to spend a little more then the Fuji finepix f610 is also a small camera but with heaps to offer & is well worth taking a look at!

Fuji finepix f410 (http://www.steves-digicams.com/2003_reviews/fuji_f410.html)

Fuji finepix f610 (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0311/03112601fujifilmf610.asp)

Goodluck in your search,

Emma. :)

[TsMom]

I just bought a new camera, and while researching cameras I saw one from Olympus that might be perfect. I almost got it. It is the Olympus Stylus 300 (3 megpixel) or 400 (4 megapixel). The 300 has dropped in price quite a bit lately, I think less than 200 on Amazon. What's great about these is that they are very small and WEATHER RESISTANT. If he is going to be taking these to the beach, that will be good. They also got rave reviews.

Here are also some links to some reviews. The first is great because it lets you look at cameras based on your needs.
www.imaging-resource.com
www.dpreview.com
www.steves-digicams.com

Fair warning though. I'd be scared to take my camera to the beach, not because of the water, necessarily but because of the salt and the sand. Last time I did this, with a film camera, I ruined my camera. I'd have him store it in a plastic baggie when he goes surfing just in case, and make sure he gets most of the sand off his hands before he handles it.

Hope this helps,
LaWanna