Which are the best digital cameras , canon or sony ?

Canon

Sony's with the Carl Zeiss Vario Tessar Lens are way better than any Canon. Also, Sony's are not that expensive for the features they come with. Make sure you get one with high ISO and Image Stabilization.

you can never go wrong with canon, with sony you may only be buying the brand and not a very good product. i have a sony camera and after a few months it started to malfunction. my sister also bought a sony camera and the flash does not work. i would go for the canon. i actually just bougght a sanyo and i like it very much, no complaints.

Point and shoot? DSLR?

In the point and shoot arena, any camera listed by dpreview should be a good one.

Look for a camera that uses SD memory cards. The are the most mainstream card for point and shoot cameras. If DLSR, CF and SD memory cards are the two hot tickets used by Nikon and Canon.

canon

i have had both, i found that the canon was easier to use than the sony, both cameras had pretty much the same features and picture quality.

Even though I personally own this ultra compact camera, I would still like to highly recommend the purchase of a Nikon Coolpix L10 for the following reasons:

1. Besides taking well-exposed hi-quality 5 megapixel pictures, it uses a standard set of rechargeable double AA batteries which last a very long time;
2. Has a 3x optical zoom;
3. The flash setting for "red-eye" correction is on the navigator wheel and not within a submenu;
4. It's very small and light;
5. Uses inexpensive SD memory cards;
6. The digital video feature takes wonderful "sound" videos which are noise free. It records the piano very well with it's built-in microphone;
7. It comes with a USB 2.0 transfer cable which you connect to your USB computer port;
8. Has tripod mount on bottom of camera;
9. And the price is a mere $120 [sold at Samy's Camera - www.samys.com, and Staples.com.]

Good luck!