Camera Shopping

I'm in the market for a new digital camera, mainly because my current only is a clunky piece of crap that takes terrible photos and eats AAs like a starving bear. I think the reason I've been so lax about selling stuff online is that trying to take pictures of my items is a ghastly chore that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.




This is the piece I'm eyeing. At ~$480 it's just under my max budget, and if I buy it from Amazon I can cut down the price a bit with my Swagbucks earnings (I have about $30 in gift cards at the moment.)

It looks perfect, and not too pricey, but what I need to shoot the most is macro photos of small items such as hair clips, books, jewelry, things like that. My friend told me I'd probably want to get a macro lens for it, which would cost another $300+!


This was another piece I was looking at. It's a little cheaper, but I guess not as...advanced? I really don't know. I did look up some photos on flickr that were taken with it, and they looked quite good. Would it be on the same level as the Canon, should I never end up buying that extra macro lens? I don't know. T_T

From what I can glean from the reviews, the Olympus is like in-between a point and shoot and a DSLR, but the Canon is actually a DSLR. What the difference is, I have no clue. It would be nice if I could test them out first!