If you are not a professional photographer, or if you are not taking up photography as a hobby, you do not have to get a really expensive digital camera if your only purpose for it is to capture the great moments in your life. The digital camera you would need would be something that you can whip out when something nice happens at home. It would also be something that you can easily bring along to special events and to your travels.

You can find such a digital camera to suit your needs for under $300. The five best digital cameras that you can get for under $300 are listed below.

Canon PowerShot A720 IS. Many experts in digital cameras have opined that the Canon PowerShot series is the best line available in the market today. It is therefore not surprising that it has cornered a good portion of the market.

What makes this particular digital camera so special? For one, it has 8.0 megapixels and its lenses have a 6x zoom. It also boasts of an increased usability that makes it easy for the person using it to control the pictures he or she is taking.

Nikon Coolpix P50. his digital camera poses itself to be a middle-ground camera. As it is, it is a good startup camera for anyone who wishes to learn serious photography, but it is wieldy enough to serve ordinary point-and-shoot picture-taking purposes. This Nikon digital camera model has 8.1 megapixels, and it also has a 3.6x zoom with a wide angle.

Canon SD1100 IS. Another digital camera coming out of Canon's production line, this model introduces a couple of new features that were not yet seen in other digital cameras, be it from Canon or from any other brand. These features in particular are face detection and motion detection. Both are aimed at preventing picture blurring

Sony CyberShot DSC H10. This digital camera is designed for photographers on a tight budget ? great for heavy-duty shooting and yet going for a mere price of less than $300. It has 8.1 million effective pixels and is fitted with a 10x optical zoom manufactured by Carl Zeiss.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5. This model from the Panasonic digital camera lineup is dubbed as a ?Travel Zoom? camera. It has a powerful zoom lens ? a 10x optical zoom ? and yet the gadget itself is quite slim and handy. It boasts of 10.7 million pixels, a high-resolution 3.0 LCD screen, and the ability to make movies with a resolution of up to 1280 x 720 pixels. Other than that, it has 22 shooting modes and a built-in clipboard.

These are the five best digital cameras that people with $300 to spare can buy. Take your pick.