I'm in the same boat right now - looking for a better digicam. I have an old Canon S100 (the little Elph thing) that still works nice for snapshots. It's 2MP and fits in a pocket - perfect for parties and stuff like that where you want to take a bunch of simple pics of people and upload/email small pics of average quality. But my little Elph fails miserably when I attempt to photograph pinnipeds.

So I think I want to step up to the next level - even if it means taking a class to learn how to take really good photos with a mid-range ("prosumer") camera. I've read countless reviews about cameras - and lots of advice on how to go about properly learning to use to a good camera - but I can't pull the trigger on actually buying one.

Here is my dilemma: Canon, Nikon, Minolta, and Sony all have fairly new "prosumer" models out now, released in late '03 or early '04. All have received fine reviews from the main review sites. All of them sell for $650-800 shipped. The problem is that I haven't found a single vendor that offers these cameras at a fair price and doesn't have pages and pages of very negative customer reviews from people who have been baited-and-switched, had their camera never show up, had a camera show up without the UPC bar code (I guess the code tore off when it fell off the truck ), etc., etc., etc. Problem after problem - and the only positive reviews look like poorly-written planted comments. I know the easy way out is to go to my local high-end camera store and pay about $1100 for the $650 camera, but know walking out the door that I have what I paid for.

Or...I can wait until Costco has what I want. (They are always a few months behind, but they frequently have good stuff at 10-20% higher than the best online price, which is a premium I'd be willing to pay to walk out with the gear in hand.)

So my question is: how do you guys buy cameras? I have always had great luck buying computer gear from deep-discount online shops, but camera stuff seems to be different. Ripoffs abound. And is it any coincidence that every single online camera vendor is based in Brooklyn? Is it just one big company?