I've been quite happy with the quality of the photos so far, Janine, but I'm no expert. The last three photos on http://flickr.com/photos/jarche (as of today) were taken with the Pentax. The camera information is given for each picture. So far, I have no complaints at all and for the price it's great. If price is less of a concern, I would go with a Cannon SD 850 which is the only compact camera that I know of that also has an optical viewfinder, which is a great advantage on sunny days.