My first camera was a minolta dimage7, it died after 6 months and was very slow, but had a 7x optical zoom. My second camera is a olympus 5050 awsome camera, but only 3x optical zoom, but I bought a 1.7 teleconverter for it, it takes awesome photos. My newest camera is a conon 10d digital slr,its the fastest camera I have ever used and I have a 480mm lense for it.If it were me I would try to by a digital slr if you can afford it.

 

Interesting on the Minolta ...

I dropped by Costco today & tried out one of these ... 10x optical ... worked really well, easy to manuever menu ... $259 & the reviews look good.

http://www.digitalcamera-hq.com/mino...source=inktxml

 

I have a Olympus c-740. I really like it 10x optical and 3x digi zoom. It's a 3.2 megapixel. I got mine at Best buy for 350$ plus a 128MB chip for free..
http://www2.buydig.com/shop/product....ber&sku=OMC740