I’m no expert at photography, but I’ve been toying with digital cameras for past year or so. I’ve researched hazaar brands, and tried everything from sony, olympus n canon to the king of traditional cameras.. kodak. I found canon digital cameras best for my purpose. I recently bought a Powershot 230 for my parents, which is a compact 3 Mpix cameras with enough features for an amatuer. If size is not an issue, I’d strongly recommend Powershot S30. The famous G2, if ofcourse, one of the best digi-cams of 2002, but is on the costlier side. Btw, these models are available in US.. I’m not sure what they are called in India.
Check out these great sites to study digital cameras in more detail:
http://www.imaging-resource.com
http://www.steves-digicams.com
http://www.dpreview.com
The softwares with canon digi-cameras are pretty neat, though I’d rather have the convinience of Sony cameras to copy files on my laptop. (Ofcourse, canon uses compact flash cards... cheaper, and easier to get)
Also check out Olympus D550... it’s very cheap, and very usable. At $250, it’s a great bargain.
Email me if you need more specific details.. I can try to help.