Fellow Gerbils! The time has come to upgrade my old point-n-shoot and I am searching for point-and-shoots with a good optical zoom and with a modest budget (say $225). Body should be relatively compact but super-compact is not necessary (for example if it fits in a jacket pocket it is acceptable). I would prefer cameras with AA batteries but upon a survey I found that the number of cameras with AA batteries seems to be sadly reducing. I would however compromise on this point if the camera offers substantially superior performance. As for uses, I am a very casual shooter who mostly just takes photos in auto-mode.
So far I have an eye on the Canon SX130 IS which is a 12MP camera with 12x optical zoom and happily uses AA batteries, standard mini-USB port, SDHC card and seems to be a good shooter. Google turned up the following review: http://www.digitalcamerareview.com/defa ... shot+sx130
Any others that you would recommend in a similar price range and with 10x or more optical zoom? A friend recommended me a Fuji F80EXR which is more compact with similar specs but uses a proprietary battery as well as proprietary cable. Do any of you have any experience with this or other Fuji cameras?
edit: Minor corrections.