In reply to KerryClimbing: I don't know much about cameras and how to take pictures. I'm a point, shoot and hope for the best type so I can't offer anything techie about it.
I like how simple it is to use without having to read the manual, it's pretty user friendly with a big screen and easy navigation around the menu's. I can generally quite decent photos (by my standard) from having it on auto or landscape. It does the job of being quite rugged I've used mine quite a lot in sea water and it's fine after a year or so. It's been dropped a few times the highest was probably two meters onto rock which resulted in a scrape but nothing more and it was jammed between a car boot and the roof when opened leaving a small mark but functioning fine.
The only thingI don't like is that it can be a pain to zoom in with big gloves on.
I would buy it again though. hth