Digital camera advice

[songdog]

Well, since my nice little Cannon Elf is sitting on top of a chukar mountain somewhere in Idaho, I've been thinking about moving to a digital camera.

I've moved up from the disposable cameras to a decent "point and shoot" camera with the Elf.  Now I'm thinking about taking the next step towards a nicer camera and digital at the same time.

I've been looking at the Sony DSC 707.  It's quite a bit more than I wanted to spend but maybe I'll swap a couple of guns that are collecting dust in the back of the safe to fund the purchase.

It has Carl Zeiss optics.  I know that I like their scopes.  It has a 5x optical zoom and a 2x digital.  It's 5.3 mega pixels which is probably way more than I need but if I ever want to get something blown up, etc....  I'm also assuming that the digital zoom feature won't be as degrading to the image if I'm starting with 5.3mp rather than 1.3?

There's an accessory kit that comes with a 2x optical zoom lense and a .5x optical lense, three filters, case, tripod, extra memory card and cleaning stuff.

Opinions?  Experiences?  Comments?  

 

[Jackalope]

5.3 megapixels?  That's a lot!  How much is that camera?  I've looked at a lot of photography sites and the consensus with most of them is at least a 3 megapixel camera.  I guess it all depends on how deep you want to get into it.  My opinion would be that you probably don't need that high of a resolution camera.  You probably wouldn't really need to go higher than 4 megapixel if you plan on blowing up a lot of pictures.  As far as zoom goes, I found something interesting on a site.  You can buy a bracket which will mount your camera right up against a spotting scope to get WAY out there!  I haven't tried it yet but it sounds interesting.  I have a 2.5X digital and 3 optical zoom on my camera (Olympus C-3000Z) and you do notice a little bit of distortion while using the digital zoom but it's not as bad with the high setting (3.34 megapixel).  

Hey, I just looked that camera up on the web and I remember looking at it.  My wife really liked the way it felt.  Anyways, it all depends on what you really want to do with it and how much you want to spend.  From what I've read, though, you won't see much, if any, difference in quality on an 11X14 print between 3 and 5 megapixels.

Mike