My old beat-up Sony Mavica FD-81 is and does everything I need. Has auto-macro too, down to the point where it will still focus razor sharp just before the lens actually touches the object you are shooting, about as close as you can get without additional stand-alone microscope lenses and such. And with the 5-hour optional battery and floppies so you don't have to connect anything to the computer, it's about as convenient as anything out there. Plus I can shoot a picture, then take out the flopy and stick another one in and copy the pic onto that floppy to share with someone, hand it to him right there and he can go home and look at it by just inserting the floppy into his own computer. And it also makes up to 1-minute long digital MPEG movies, too...WITH SOUND...from which I can stick the floppy in my computer and e-mail it (along with the regular pictures too) to anyone immediately.
I think you can pick up a used one very reasonably (check e-bay, they come up occsionally), got mine for under $300, and they were only $700 new, way back when digitals were still a very expensive new consumer product. The new Mavicas have had many of these features separated out so that you have to buy the upper end models to get all the different functions.
I've owned the much more expensive and supposedly "better" high end digitals like the Nikons (Coolpix 775 and 880), the Canon Elph (tiny credit card sized model except thicker), and the Fuji Finepic 4700 but once I got this old Mavica I sold every other digital I had because I discovered I never used them any more.
All the pictures I've ever posted here at CPF were with the FD-81. You should get one if you can find it. Unless you plan to print out 8x10 glossies, you won't need anything else.
Sorry for the long post...
