Need a very compact, but good, camera

[houlty]

Hi,

I need some help as early next year i'll be leaving to travel the world, and i really need a decent camera to serve me well. I has to be compact, but still produce good quality pictures. Currently i've considered the following points which i ask you add to if you think of anything else:-

• I was thinking of just using the camera in my phone (k800i), but this just wont perform well enough in the night time due to a poor flash. Plus, whilst i know megapixels aren't everything, it is only 3mp.
  
• Due to the form factor, i also don't think i'll be able to get any better than a 3/4x optical zoom which is a shame. Please prove me wrong though.
  
• Everyone i ask says get either canon or nikon (i have a nikon d50 so i know the quality of them is good), but am i really going to see a great improvement on such a compact camera (ricoh, casio, samsung all offer nice little models).
  
• I will be going around end of March next year, so looking at camera's now may be a bit too early, but if there are new models released in the mean time, their pretty much gonna be upgrades of what's suggested here, right?
  

Currently, i've been searching the internet and gone to Jessops to try some out and come up with the following list (in no particular order) of potential candidates, but any other possibilities would be welcome:-

Panasonic DMC-FX55EB

Nikon Coolpix S510

Canon IXUS 70

Casio EX-V8

Samsung i85

Olympus FE-290

Ricoh R7

Pentax Optio S7 (I like this because its the samllest, i think...)

If someone with some experience in the compact camera field could point me in the right direction i would appreciate it, as its mind boggling looking through all the various reviews and comparisons.

Many thanks,

houlty

p.s. Some of these i haven't seen in real life, so i haven't got real life idea if how big they are, but i would stress that compactness is top priority.

Edited September 23, 2007 by houlty

[sin-ergy]

hm, you should read up reviews on each of those. dpreview.com maybe?

of course you can't go wrong with canon.