For most people, photography is memories. Isn't that what people freak out about when their house caught fire, if nobody's hurt of course. If you're insured, you'll get your stuff back, but all those crappy little snaps and random pics of friends, families, travels, you'll never get them back.

Some people (not professionals or artists), my father included, are quite photo geeks in their own way, and digital allow them to experiment as much as they want, so that's a good thing.

But unless I see the average dude/tourist do something else than the usual landscape with his family in it, using any camera worth more than say 800US$, I'd assume he's a total poser, or just has money to burn and doesn't care. Probably uses it in the highest compression and smallest picture size settings so he can cram even more pics on the memory card, doesn't use raw format on anything, pop the flash even when it's not needed, never heard of depth-of-field and wouldn't know how to anyway. 'You know, just one of these buttons and dials, I mean, did you see the size of that user's guide? It freakin' ridiculous! It's a camera, how complicated is that supposed to be!'

Yes, THAT dude. I'm sure you know who I'm talking about.

No offense though, the fact that there's lots of them brings the prices down for 'pro-sumer models' which are the only ones I can afford now.

But really, my advice to them would be to buy a regular point-and-shoot with a decent optical zoom. I think if you drop 500 bucks on that, you'd get a kickass camera.