...now EDC'ing a digital camera. Very useful for many things; taking notes, remembering stuff to do, scenic photos...

Wow! Talk about resurrecting an old thread...

With the latest generation cell phones, I think a lot of people are edcing some sort of camera device these days.

As a matter of fact I do carry a disposable camera in my current pack. Its still in its foil wrapper. Once I go back to my normal pack (DW is using while on crutches).

Many years ago when I had a disposable camera on me and witnessed a car accident. The guy who caused the accident got out and got really hostile with the female he hit. So I whipped out my camera and snapped some picts while both cars were in the road before they moved them for traffic purposes.

When the cops showed up the guy started blaming the female for the accident. I stood off to the side for several minutes, gawking, then offered the camera to the officer with my name and number on it. He called me a while later telling me the pictures helped close the case and cite the guy.

So yes, camera phones are very cool, but i do like that I can just snap some photos and put the effort on the other party instead of me having to type in emails or send here and there. As common as phone cameras are, a lot of people still can't take them well or send them or receive them correctly.

Olympus 1030sw or equivalent... I love those little water/drop proof things. Have one with me all the time. Doesn't take the best pictures in the world but since it is so shock and drop and water resistant I have it on me all the time. Average camera on you takes better pictures than professional set up left at home

I bought a camera phone, but it runs windows mobile, so you hunt for the the camera button, wait for it to load then hunt for the menu's to change its zoom and settings then finally take a low res blurry picture. Then you have to use some tool afterward to insert the exif data from the file date and time because Microsoft left that out as well. Quite annoying.

I always have my iphone with me and 90% of the time I carry a cannon SD1000 in one of my pockets. Its not an essential device so there are times it stays in my murse but its something that I like having. Just never know when you want to snap a picture of something or take a short video.

While everyone has an opinion about a camera to carry the best advice I'll give you is simple. If your going to carry it constant make sure its small enough to pocket along with the other 50 things we all carry. Or that you can carry it in a small belt pouch with out being to intrusive to your life and with out looking like a total bat freak because of how much is on your belt.

The problem I'm finding is a camera small enough to pocket carry doesn't use AA batteries so you have to remember to charge it up every so often. I can't find a small pocketable one that uses AA batteries so I can use the low self discharge. We keep our old camera in a diaper bag which is almost EDC and it runs off a pair of AA's so some ebeloops in there and I never have to worry about it.

I have a phone with a 1.3MP camera in my pocket, and a 5MP Canon PowerShot in my EDC bag.
Neither is meant to be a lifesaver, but I have them handy if a situation comes up that warrants it. The PowerShot uses AA batteries and an SD card, which puts it in line with several other gadgets in my EDC bag, so I always have plenty of batteries and storage media.

I usually carry a small Casio EX-Z1050 which can give some decent photographs and is quick to fire up and take a snap or two. The battery life for this camera is very good, but I still carry a spare Lithium Ion cell just in case. With a 16Gbyte SD card it will take around 3000-4000 10 Megapixel photos or over 3hours of VGA video.

http://www.digicamreview.com/casio_exilim_ex_z1050_review.htm

Modern Camera technology is pretty amazing. Even 720p HD video is now being introduced into sub $200 pocket cameras.

I have some distant ancestor of the current Canon Powershot A1000 IS, and have looked at this particular model to replace it. The A1000 IS takes two AAs, an SD card, and fits in my shirt pocket. The 35mm equivalent of the zoom is roughly 38-150mm, and it's 10 megapixels.