Personally, for amateur photography, I find Canon Powershot (Ultra compact or point & shoot cameras) great and would recommend them for sure. You will never regret a Canon buy. They range anywhere between $149 to $ 309 and beyond. Depends on your budget. Even the most basic one has all the great features, great Canon lens with 8megapixels ranging till 14.1 megapixels which are critical towards image quality. Just keep in mind that higher the megapixels superior is your image quality so SD790 or SD1000 or SD1100 as they go on means higher megapixels or features. Go for the higher megapixels which you can afford. I have a Canon Powershot and I use it practically everywhere, takes great audio-videos, and stills and rarely use my movie camera. No regrets.
Good luck !
