I think you will find that camra brands are as heated topic as DSB or bare bottom
I for instance love my fuji (all 1500.00 of it
) but the average person is not going to buy a camra that is in the "Prosumer" class having said that Fuji makes some exelent sub $400.00 cameras. If I was to buy any other camera other than a fuji, it would probably be a nikon. But even then there are only certian models I would look at. Every "large" brand has good cameras you just have to find them, but brands like HP, Vivitar and such are cheep price/quality cameras that are marketed for the people who want to put snaps of there family on the web for others to see.
what you should look at for a camera that is good for pics of your fish tank is
1, a good rated Macro setting.
2, a user definable/custom white ballance.
3, good optical zoom levels (forget about digital zoom you want a 6+ or higher optical zoom)
4, manual control option for at
LEAST focus, shutter speed and apatrue.
5, a wide range of both the apature setting and shutter speed.
and the ability to add filters and such is a bonus also.
the next most important chunk of equipment is a tripod.
don't skimp on this I bought a 50.00 one and now I am looking for a good one
If you have the following with a bit of luck you can take astonishing pics once you figure out how to use them all in conjunction on your tank.
Oh almost for got the biggest secreat that I am sure SamW will agree with me on. Take a tone of pics of each thing and only keep the best one for people to see as for every "awsome" pic you have you will have between 100 and 400 good, medeoker and totaly bad pics. well maybe I am exagerating a little but I only keep about 1 in 32 pics of my tank on average. sometimes I will shoot 100 pics and not like any whare other days I will shoot 30 and keep 20.
Steve