A lot of point-and-shoot cameras offer fancy features, such as a big LCD, an antishake mode, or in-camera panorama stitching. The new $400 HP Photosmart R967 has all three, plus great image quality. In our tests the R967 earned the top score for exposure accuracy as well as high marks for image sharpness. But poor battery life and a high price caused its low chart ranking.
The new Kodak EasyShare C743 also turned in very accurate exposures--and it costs just $200. The trade-off is in the features: The C743 lacks manual controls such as shutter-priority mode, and doesn't provide image stabilization or a panorama mode. Also, the camera's images showed more distortion than we saw in the test shots from some other models.