i've used, over the years, the cheaper viewfinder 35 mm camers, slr's (single lens reflex that view through the lens itself), polaroids, and digitals. and quite frankly, with the newer, higher resolutions, digital is the way for me. there is no developing to hassle with, no film to buy again, no waiting for film development and a much easier editing process which doesnt require darkroom equipment and so on.

Canon and Nikon both make digital slr's now and they are both quite good. if you go with a non-slr in the price range of $100 to $900, you're going to be limiting yourself in what you can do. these viewfinder cameras dont allow for the extras like lenses and filters and other accessories which can get you the shot you really want. they are also mostly limited to about 3-5x optical zoom, though i did see one recently with 10x optical zoom, and that's just too confining for me.

as for the question of black and white, this is never a problem with digital even if you only have a color type camera with no built in b&w setting. you simply load your pics directly into a computer with a decent paint program and change the thing to 256 grey scale, or, simply lower the saturation till the pic looks b & w. the versatility of digital and the loss of hassling with film makes digital an easy choice for me. and, with a few upgrades to the memory, you can often get 10x the number of shots from one virtual 'roll' of film that you could with a film type. and, you can even erase the shot on the fly, leaving you additional space if you want it.

K.