Hi: Adding to Tim's comments: >Finally it might be useful to have a tripod mounting as you may not be >able to hold it steady enough to get clear pictures. Ask the shop to >demonstrate their tripods in use. I once bought a handy little tripod >that extends to about 8 inches high and is ideal for taking photos of >documents that are stood up, but not documents that are flat on a table; >a mere £10 IIRC. The rules in the National Archives and often Record Offices don't allow the use of tripods or flash - though the National Archives do have a few camera stands, so a tripod mounting is useful for this purpose. For this reason when I was in the market for a camera about a year ago I paid a lot of attention to camera speed, since I would typically have to hold the camera over the document to be photographed. And I also strongly favoured the (relatively few) cameras that have an LCD screen that can be swung out and tilted, so that you can direct the camera easily while holding it out in front of you. I bought a Canon A95 (5 mp) and am very pleased with it. Since I am not a camera expert, I was pleased to find that there is a huge amount of excellent information and general advice on digital cameras at the several independent review sites. The ones I found very useful were, in no particular order: http://www.steves-digicams.com/default.htm http://www.dcresource.com/ http://www.imaging-resource.com/ http://www.megapixel.net/ I steered clear of the various dealers and magazines and their web-sites, as I soon gained the impression that the independent sites listed above were much more informative, professional and trustworthy. Cheers Brian Randell -- School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 222 7923 FAX = +44 191 222 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/