I got a Kodak EASYSHARE Z1275 for about $75 a few months ago off of woot. I suggest experimenting with your manual settings in different light conditions to see how to get the best pics. That's what I did.

Just keep taking photos. Take the camera everywhere and take photos at any opportunity you see.

It's not like you have to worry about running out of film or anything (inb4 running out of memory. Bad photos can always be deleted).

I like that it can change the lighting itself depending on the scene. When it's dark enough, it shows 1" at the bottom, and gives more light, when it's bright, like a computer monitor, it says 1/60, and it dims sometimes. It has really clear pictures, I could take a picture of a screen with almost zero glare. I also like the picture editor, I mess around with it just for fun, mostly pictures or my dog. And it takes less pictures, maybe because of better quality? Also bigger resolution? The video can only record 30min on an empty 2GB, MAYBE better quality and/or resolution? I can't wait to try it out for real, take it to school and try some photos, like at a football game, football season's over, but not the PowerPuff(that's how it's spelled right?)football game. Last year you couldn't hear shit with my old Kodak. It's really nice, too bad it can't record or take 16:9 pictures, unless I missed that.

EDIT: I barely realized how to take pictures in Widescreen mode. I want a carrying case now. Is CelluarFactory a trustable place? I found a bunch of carrying cases for my camera.