In the midst of the long, bright summer days, many things come into focus — things such as the importance of family, the beauty of nature, and the joy of spending time with friends. If we're lucky, we either find or make the time to enjoy these pleasures, and we do our best to make that time memorable.
And in the spirit of preserving those memories with as sharp a focus as possible, we've taken a bit of time ourselves to test and investigate the best digital cameras and camcorders on the market. We realize that not everybody's interests, skills and needs are identical. Some people just want to take pictures and make movies with a minimum of muss and fuss; some are looking for a lot of camera for the money; others want a sophisticated, feature-rich, powerhouse machine and some people want something special to suit a specific need.
To that end, we've collected five digital cameras and five digital camcorders; you only need to focus on how much time, money and effort you want to put into capturing your summer moments, then shoot.