My daughter's doing a graphic design course and I want to buy her a
digital camera as part of her required equipment. She got a hand out
from college that gave a list of suggested cameras covering the whole
price spectrum. I've spent some time researching a selection of them
and have ended up further away from a decision than I was in the first
place. :-\

I started with the low price group which included the Fuji Finepix
A340. What put me off this one was poor flash and no manual settings.
I then went to the next higher price group which included the Kodak
Easyshare DX7630 and the HP Photosmart 945. What put me of the Kodak
was the more expensive proprietary batteries. What put me off the HP
was the way the reviews rated it as being of significantly lower spec
than the Kodak. What put me off both was the lack of RAW or TIFF
output, which I'd hoped would be available at this price level.

So, I read some more and I learnt that it was the Canon and Nikon
cameras that were most likely to have the multiple filetype options.
Well, I looked at several Canon models up to a significantly higher
price than the Kodak or HP I'd seen but these Canons only had JPEG
output.

Can anyone please suggest a middle range camera that's 4MP or more,
has manual control and the facility to add lenses and filters and also
has RAW or similar output option?
TIA
--
Lila Duncan