camera help. im a newbie and i want to get a one for my mom!!!?

[Tims]

i want to get a camera for my mothers day. im looking at one for under a thousand dollars. she'll be using it to take alot of sports pictures, and of things moving around. ive been looking and i can get a pocket one for 200 bucks with 15 MP but the ones for 1000 have 15 as well so whats the difference ? and what would you recommend?

 

[casperskitty]

Go into a camera store and talk to a salesperson. They can help you pick out the right camera for mom. It is really going to depend on how inclined your mother is to technology. Will she want to learn to use a DSLR? If she might find it too complicated, and maybe a little heavy too, it might be better to go with an advanced compact. Like a bridge camera.

Bridge cameras have the controls of a DSLR and often have a great zoom range but are much smaller and lightweight. Of course the trade-off is that the resolution isn't quite what you get from a DSLR. But if mom won't be getting prints made any larger than 11x17 I doubt that you would even notice a difference. You might even be able to go larger on the prints without any picture quality loss.

 

[Artemisc]

A good quality lens is better than a higher number of pixels. Pixels matter more if you intend to blow pics up. I would look on the cnet.com web site, camera review sites, etc.