A digital camera is one of those rare products that successfully bridges the two worlds of IT (Information Technology) and AV (Audio Visual). That's a bold claim to make, but we can justify it fully.

Moving from film to digital means that you never have to pay for a roll of film again, and neither do you have to pay to have your film developed. In addition to the obvious cost savings, the process of transferring photos from your digital camera to your PC, Mac or notebook is very quick, so you can see the results almost instantly.

Then, once you have the photos on your computer, you can edit them with photo editing software, print them out or e-mail them to friends and relatives in foreign parts. Best of all, you can store thousands of photos on your hard drive with no degradation in quality as the years roll by, although we'd recommend that you archive them to CD or DVD on occasion, just in case your hard drive fails.

So the obvious question is which digital camera you should buy, and that's the question we're addressing in this group test, with a selection of cameras ranging in price from £280 to £350, and in resolution from 3-megapixel to 5-megapixel. Remember that the prices we've quoted are manufacturers' recommended prices, so you should be able to buy your chosen camera for less.

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