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I'm tired of paying for developing film for casual picture taking.
While nothing will replace my 35mm slr for the good stuff, I'm in the market for a digital camera.

Thigs I'd like:
3m pixels at the minimum
good battery life (relativily)
reasonable quality output
ability to add filters

What is the consensus on storage medium?

Any suggestions, tales of woe, things to think about when I do more shopping?

I'm a noob when it comes to this stuff..............

Thanks

Ive had a canon a40, the A70 would probably fit your bill pretty much if you can take a compact, it got manual control also, screw on thread adapter for even more macro or tele lens, or filters. Give pretty good image quality straight out of the cam, or really good depending what you compare with. Or you can look at a comparative Nikon. Thats if you want the cheap things. If you have more money to spend, look at olympus image stabilized super zooms, the Canon G-series, and the higher Nikons.
If you got even more money, Minolta Dimage 7series, Fuji S602z, Olympus E-20, Sony F717.

A step above that, you could as well go with a D100 or 10D, but in that case, i just hope you have a nice assortment of lenses for either system.

Except for these, there are really no need to look at anything else, unless you want it supersmall, then you have some canons, the Ixus, exilim, etc. Or a lot of zoom range, olympus or Fuji.

Whatever you do, dont ever care about digital zoom, forget about that. Look at the optical zoom. Compact flash is pretty much the standard for anything. But some of these use other media, where olympus newer cameras have a special panorama mode(image tagging) made avaible through the media. Except for that, CF is probably the best and the most versatile, microdrives, etc. And get a separate media reader that supports USB2.

I have a FujiFilm Finepix 3800 its a great camera for the price . 399 retail but i got mine for 299 off ebay . It is a 3.2 mega pixel camera . It has a 6x optical zoom ( main reason i bought it ) . I think the 35mm focal lenght equivalent is 28-200 i am not sure on the exact numbers .

It uses standard 55 mm filters which was a big plus for me because I already have quite a few 55 mm filters .

The camera uses XD picture card media . Its kind of an odd ball media if you ask me . I think Fuji and Olympus are the only two companys that use the xd picture card . If Fuji were ever to stop making the media I would be stuck with the cards I have now , and no way to get a new one . So if card got lost or quit working I would be screwed . Compact Flash is far better in this regard if you ask me .

You can also add a sound memo to any picture you like . The sound memo thing sounds kind of cheesy but it actually has a pretty good use . I travel around 50,000 miles a year for my job . All the driving I do is hurried I dont really have time to stop and take and good photos . What I do is Take a quick snap of something and add a voice memo of the location so I know where its at . Then later on I can go back and take some proper photographs of the place .

The only think I really dislike about the camera is the fact that it dosent have an optical view finder . It has an electronic view finder instead of an optical one . The efv is kind of grainy and has a fairly slow refresh rate so following a moving animal or something is a little hard to do .

The menu system is really simple and easy to use so thats a plus also . I used to have a Agfa camera and the menu system on it sucked .The Fuji is much better in this regard .

Battery life of the 3800 is simply awsome . It uses 4AA batteries , I have 4 1800 mha nikel metal hydride batteries in it . I can take somewhere inbetween 400 and 500 shots on a charge And if you are ever out taking pictures and your batteries go dead you can just grab some bunny or copper tops and keep shooting without having to wait for batteries to charge .

The camera has a pretend manual mode that will let you adjust a few things nothing like my good old X700 though . It also has a macro and portrait mode . It can take up to 60 seconds of video at one time with sound .