These are mainly designed for first-time camera owners, so while most intermediate features like adjustable ISO levels and colour modes are available, they’re usually buried in the menu settings.

Megapixel count isn’t the great divider anymore. Most vendors offer at least one other eight-megapixel camera at a higher price point, and there are a few ways they distinguish between the different models. Cameras at the entry-level are typically plainer and chunkier, with smaller and lower-quality LCD displays.

These cameras also tend to be slower in operation, and less likely to include features like image stabilisation, face detection and smile shot (where the camera automatically snaps the photo when it detects a smile).

Of course, image quality also improves the more you pay, but don’t assume that a cheap camera means shoddy photos. We took pictures with an eight-megapixel camera that cost a hundred dollars more, and while images did look noticeably sharper and with stronger colours, the quality disparity between it and the two best-performing cameras in this roundup wasn’t huge.

The main thing to worry about is the camera’s auto-focus, and it’s this feature more than anything else that separated the wheat from the chaff in this budget camera roundup.

Olympus FE-320

The Olympus FE-320 is a breath of fresh air at the budget end of the market, with an impossibly slim physique, trendy black paintjob and vibrant 2.7-inch LCD. A lot of effort has gone into making the FE-320 as easy and delightful to use as possible: scene mode selection uses full screen photos and descriptions for each type of scene; a separate Guide mode offers pointers for taking different types of photos – perfect for beginners; and the exposure compensation setting shows thumbnails of different exposure stop in real-time. Sadly, the image quality doesn’t quite match up to its appearance. The camera struggles to keep objects in focus if your hands aren’t deadly still, and while shake reduction is available as a separate mode, this would’ve been better implemented as a camera-wide feature. A memory card isn’t included, and Olympus is one of two companies that still uses xD over the industry-standard SD card.

Price: $249

Website: www.olympus.com.au

Rating: 3/5

Canon PowerShot A580

The PowerShot A580 is anything but sexy. It’s actually the chunkiest camera we reviewed for this feature, but if you’re not too hung up on appearance, the A580 is a comfortable camera to use. A hump on the front makes it easier to grip securely, and the controls are all ideally situated for easy access by your thumb. It’s the only camera in this roundup with an optical viewfinder, and if you use this rather than the 2.5-inch LCD for composing photos, you’ll end up saving a lot of battery life. Travellers will also appreciate the use of AA batteries instead of a rechargeable battery pack. The A580’s LCD is fairly low quality, but don’t be fooled by the photos you see in the display – this camera takes excellent pictures, with vivid colours and lots of detail. But it’s a little slow between shots, so we wouldn’t recommend it for action photography.

Price: $229

Website: www.canon.com.au

Rating: 4/5

Nikon Coolpix L15

On the surface, the Coolpix L15 is an unapologetically basic camera, with a functional hardware design, unsophisticated menu system, and low-quality 2.8-LCD display. But there’s a lot more than meets the eye with this entry-level snapper. Aware that most compact camera users take shots of people and sprawling landscapes, Nikon has focussed on making both types of photos easier to shoot. A dedicated ‘one-touch portrait’ mode finds the person in the frame and automatically adjusts the focus and exposure accordingly. A panorama mode – one of only two cameras in this roundup to offer it – lets you stitch a series of photos together to make a single panoramic landscape. Letting the Coolpix L15 down is its slow operation time – you’ll have to wait up to eight seconds between shots. But the resulting pictures are worth the wait. This camera didn’t have any problems with auto-focus, and challenging macro and night scenes were captured beautifully.

Price: $249

Website: www.nikon.com.au

Rating: 3.5/5

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS80

The Lumix DMC-LS80 is a generously-proportioned (read: bulky) camera, but it’s classy-looking nevertheless. Like most of the other cameras in this roundup, corners have been cut with its LCD display and system speed (which are low-res and laggy respectively), but Panasonic hasn’t been shy about piling on the features. The DMC-LS80 is the sort of camera that’s accessible for beginners but with enough functionality to grow with the user as they get more experienced. Twenty-one scene modes are ample for covering the different scenarios for photos, but if you can’t decide the DMC-LS80 throws in an intelligent mode, which automatically picks the scene mode that’s most appropriate. The Q.Menu is also handy for one-click access to functions like sequential shooting, ISO and metering – things that are usually take a few clicks to find in the menu system. The Lumix wasn’t so good for night-time landscape shots, but macros, portraits and day-time landscape photos were all excellent

Price: $219 

Website: www.panasonic.com.au

Rating: 4/5

Kodak M893 IS

The M893 is a point-and-shoot in the classic sense. People shots and landscapes are sharp and well-focussed in natural lighting (albeit with slightly washed out colours), but anything outside that is a struggle for the camera to pull off. Macro shots are still blurry, and extending the zoom to full-length results in a lot of graininess and noise. The M893 goes out of its way to hand-hold beginners – offering text descriptions for each setting on the mode dial as well as the individual scene modes, - so we were surprised to see slightly more advanced features like ISO selection, panorama stitch exposure metering and image stabilisation tucked away in the settings. The latter does a good job at keeping close-up images in focus, but anything above ISO 400 is incredibly noisy – to the point of being unusable. The M893 is the only camera in this roundup to come with a memory card, but it’s a skimpy 32MB that’s only good for around 50 shots.

Price: $249

Website: www.kodak.com.au

Rating: 3.5/5