The Last of Olympus

My faithful Olympus is no more. After a last performance of taking 700 or so photos in Eastern Europe it mysteriously stopped working.

I could rail about our disposable culture, but the truth is that I was thinking of retiring this three year old or so camera anyway. It was no longer the best camera out there for me, but it worked and I knew how to use it. Ironically, the day it refused to work was the day I brought home the new Consumer Reports November issue on digital cameras.

If you have a digital camera that is fairly small (not necessarily an ultracompact), has a good zoom and good close up capability, please leave a comment and let me know.
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Update 11.13.07 -- I bought a Panasonic Lumnix TZ3 with lots of scene modes, a wide angle lens and 10X optical zoom. I have been playing with it for a week and I'm very happy with it. One digression --do you enjoy going to your local camera store to try out all the cameras and get advice and recommendations? Consider buying the camera there. You might pay a bit more than at the big box store or on line, but if you like having local resources like this you can't just click, you need to support your local merchants. Try negotiating, but maybe give yourself permission to say it's okay to pay a few bucks more for the service. (FYI - As it so happens, the camera was priced the same there as at Best Buy.)