Sharp Shooters

4) Casio QV-2300UXplus

CATEGORY: Over $500

PRO: 196-shot battery life, well-rounded feature set, generous storage capacity.

CON: Possible white-balance problem, slow start-up, no viewfinder.

Casio's new $799, 2.1-megapixel camera tackles a wide variety of photo chores and makes each easy to accomplish. For pros, the camera provides full manual control. Novices can choose from 28 scene-based modes the camera will automatically set to, such as beach, forest, and cityscape, each illustrated with a sample photo to give an idea of how the scene will look. Realtors and others who need wide-angle pictures will love the Casio's panorama mode: To help you line up the next shot, the Casio overlays a transparency of the previous picture's right edge; when you're done, the stitched image crawls across the LCD. Pretty slick. The unit can record in black-and-white, capture video, and even let you take self-portraits, thanks to its swivel lens. Instead of using a mode dial to set options, you rely on button shortcuts or animated icons like a winking crescent moon and twinkling stars for the preset night scene, say. The included 340MB IBM Microdrive, which holds close to 1600 low-resolution shots, helps to cut way down on memory-card swaps. Except when we had to manually focus outdoors, we had no problem relying solely on the LCD. But with a 5-second start-up time and no continuous shooting mode, this model is ill-equipped to capture action. The Casio also added a greenish cast to some indoor shots before brightening a bit; this seemed to indicate a possible white balance malfunction in our test unit, but our Casio contact said that was how the white balance worked.