Kinda heavy into photography with tons of expensive Nikon gear, but my point and shoot for incidental things is a Canon G9. Not really cheap, has lots of excellent features including manual controls when wanted, large LCD but a viewfinder too, 4x zoom (I think) and uses very standard SD memory cards. It's a good jacket pocket size, big enough to accommodate my large hands.

 

Panasonic dmc-t23. 3" led screen, 7 mega-pix, 10x optical zoom (Optical..not digital). Highest optical zoom offered I beleive in a point and shoot. Can switch shootingbewteen 3 mega pix, 5 mega-pix, 7 mega-pix. If you shoot at 3 you increase the optical zoom to 15x. Awesome camera.

 

Canon Powershot SD870 IS, is perfect and "IS" means "Image Stabilization" which is perfect for not so stable situations...

 

Along with Canon digital SLRs, I have a Canon ditigal Elph SD800 IS and a Canon G9. I like them all, but the SD800IS stays in the windshield pouch all the time. Great pictures for a small camera. The image stabilization really helps.
I like some other brands but I won't buy one that doesn't have an optical viewfinder along with the LCD. Too difficult to use the LCD in bright sun.

Jim

 

THINK SMALL & PIXELS...

Good Point N' Shoot cams would be:
Canon
Sony
Nikon
Olympus

I use a digital camera daily for my job... My last 6 cams have been Canon....

 

Sony Cybershot

 

I do cameras for a living. I will tell you that you dont have to go crazy with this, not for a little point and shoot. Keep the cost at 150.00 or less and a decent brand name and you will be fine. You do want to look for one with a pretty good size screen because the viewfinders that put in these things are usless. I just bought my wife a Kodak M753, its 7MP and its a good little camera for under $150.00.

Now my choice of camera is a Hasselblad 555ELX with a V96 digital back but that will set you back around $12,000 or so

 

The Panasonic that Chromedome was talking about is a real nice deal with its 10x optical zoom. Most people don't think they want that zoom until they see a bear (or whatever) and when you look later you can't even find it. A decent photo program on a computer works wonders, too. My brother-in-law has a Kodak with a 12x optical zoom that he really likes. My wife has a Nikon Coolpix that works very, very well. I'm into Digital SLR's, but sometimes I don't feel like carrying everything so I bought an $80 cheapy that works rather better than I thought. One thing to remember about megapixels; the higher amount you use (say 10 mp) the more space the photo takes up if you want to download it or email it. Sometimes, less can be better.

 

Another vote for the Sony cyber-shot. Nice small size, and great quality pictures. Also many different models to choose from.

 

i own the casio exilim.. great camera easy to use..