We just bought a new camera from Amazon - a Kodak Z712 IS (7 megapixel, 12X optical zoom, image stabilization). We drove out to the Cascade foothills, thinking that it would be a good place to try out the camera, but didn't really get quite the hoped-for photo opportunities. But I did manage a few shots from our deck after we got back. Here's a couple of them.
This one was shot at about 10X zoom with fairly bright sunlight from the left side. The automatic exposure worked really well, I think.

This one shows the kind of color vibrancy that I like in Kodak cameras.