P&S Digital Camera for under US$150
 

Seeking recommendations for a Point-and-Shoot digital camera for under US$150, and also advice whether it's even worth buying one.

Main uses:
* Holiday snaps, including able to take decent photos/video of the Northern Lights (will get tripod for this).
* Should also be able to take good close-ups. This is for photos of items being sold online.

Current camera is on my iPhone (I know I know). Have the Northern Lights app on it.

Is it worth getting a cheap P&S digital camera, if so any recommendations, or stick with the iPhone because a cheap P&S can't do what I need it for?

Thanks.

The whole P&S market is pretty much gone, just walk into any BestBuy and compare to what you saw before the iPhone debut. The sensors and HDR / Pano function on many modern smartphone with all the cpu processing power lay waste to any dedicated P&S. The only advantage to a P&S is likely the variable zoom lens which with even the newest smartphone dual and triple lens can't match.

I'd simply go look on eBay or your local CL and you should be able to score a $300-400 top end P$S from 3 years ago with probably marginal sensor but far better optics than your iPhone. I used to travel with a P&S and find the iPhone is simply good enough. I know the DSLR, mirrorless crowd will disagree, but for me good enough, but sometimes you do need the big sensor, PDAF and big guns too.

I shopped for a P&S some months ago so that I don't always have to carry my mirrorless and lenses. Remaining compact P&S don't deliver better pictures than your average high end phone. The only exception is the Sony RX100. Since I'm not into shooting 4K videos I picked up an older RX100M3. It's very compact and delivers great raws and jpegs.

Sadly no Best Buy. CL is barely used here. And eBay is only in Chinese, and little used. Plenty of camera shops but many are switch-and-bait places, or staff don't know their stock very well so I would have to know what I want.

Guess I'll stick with my old iPhone 5.

Your iPhone camera side of things getting pretty long in tooth, newer phones have significant upgrade in sensor/stabilization that improve the photos a bit. Upgrading phone from a 5 is likely a better spent few hundred dollars than any camera buy at this point.

Second this. The only reason for a P&S over a phone is optics.