I would look into the Canon S45 S50 S60 S70. I have a S45 and it's great. You have complete manual control if you wish, exposure compensation, manual focus, white balance, aperature, you can set everything. It even saves images in RAW format if you like. No compression like jpegs, you get exactly what the CCD records. Allows you to adjust white balance, exposure and other things after the fact. It's still small enough to carry around. Best and most features in a camera of that size period. Check out http://www.steves-digicams.com/ for some reviews. If you got specific questions about cameras pm me.