Okey dokey, so I'm looking for a new digital camera, because our last one broke.

It needs to:

• Take pictures at at least 1600x1200, if not more.
• be able to take sharp pictures of things up close. (I was trying to take a picture of my bird with my last one, and it always turned out blurry because he was always moving a bit.)
• Kind of goes with above, it needs a manual focus. Not just autofocus.
• 3x, if not 4x optical Zoom.
• Good battery life. Something that can take more than 30 pictures with the digital display on.
• Not insanely expensive. Definitely don't want to spend over 350. And even that is pushing it..

Or, if you don't want to help me find a camera, post your camera, what you like/dislike, what you recomend, don't recommend.

"Take pictures at at least 1600x1200, if not more."

"Preferably 4mp or higher, although I could go down to 3."

So which are you wanting? =)

Anyway, tons of stuff is easily within your price range. I'm a pretty big fan of Sony cameras myself, and the DSC-P72 or P73 seem to fit everything you want. One big reason I like Sony is they actually bundle nice batteries and chargers with their cameras when lots of companies expect you to buy them separate. You can also find both of those cheaper than what Sony lists them for.

Only thing is when you say manual focus, do you want to actually be able to physically manipulate the focus, or just be able to set it manually any way? Both of those cameras have you manually set the focus with the menu, not by rotating the lens. Actually I can't think of any non-SLR camera that lets you manually focus that way...

Oh, I have a P72 and my father has a P73, so I've used them both and have pretty good experience with both.

This is what we use in my digital photography class:
http://www.nikonusa.com/template.php?cat=1&grp=2&productNr=25513#
I used it the other day to take a bunch of pictures, ill try to get them uploaded.

I have a HP Photosmart 215, POS
my dad has two Nikon Coolpix 990's, quite nice 3.4Mp if i remember right
and if your going digital, stock up on rechargeble batteries

Darth- Erm. I was kind of throwing that list together.. shh. :p

1600x1200 res. at least.

When I say manual focus, it doesn't need to be an SRL twist the lense type focus, just not autofocus only. (Like some cameras are).