(FORTUNE Magazine) – POLITICIANS ARE FOND of asking, Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Well, let's see. The last time we endured a photo- finish presidential election, we weren't at war, gas cost less than 50 bucks a tank, Enron stock was over $80 a share, the Yankees were the world champions of baseball, and for $1,000 you could buy a high-end consumer digital camera with 3.3 megapixels of image resolution.

So here we are four years later, and the good news is ... well, for the same money or even half as much, you can buy a point-and-shoot digital camera with more than double the image resolution of the top Y2K models, with much better shooting performance and convenient features that make it easier to take memorable photos, even for novices.

At the head of our winning ticket is Nikon's Coolpix 8800 VR ($1,000), an eight-megapixel beauty with a 10X zoom lens. It can also capture 60-second movies with sound at 30 frames a second. If you're trembling with excitement so far, relax: It features optical vibration reduction (the VR in the camera's name), a feature that's typically found only on professional cameras. VR reduces shakes and blurs, even at slower shutter speeds and at maximum zoom.

Unlike the 6.1-megapixel Nikon D70 digital single-lens reflex (SLR) camera I raved about earlier this year, the Coolpix 8800 VR is an all-in-one model that does not have interchangeable lenses, and it lacks the speed and the wider range of precision manual controls offered by the D70. But that could actually be a bonus for most consumers, who just want the best possible photos with the least complication and expense. While casual shooters can use it in point-and-shoot mode, the 8800 also offers experienced photographers enough advanced manual controls for creative shots.

Megapixels are important because they indicate the level of fine detail that the camera captures and also determine the size of prints that can be made from each shot. The more pixels, the bigger the prints. But the quality of the pixels is even more important, and the Coolpix 8800 VR makes admirable pixels. Images were sharp and vibrant with excellent color, and yielded prints as large as 13 by 19 inches. Besides allowing big prints, the eight-megapixel image is easier to crop.

The camera's 10X Nikkor ED glass lens offers one of the longest zooms in its class--the equivalent of a 35- to 350- millimeter zoom on a film camera. Control buttons are handy and well placed, and software controls are easily navigated on the camera's 1.8-inch LCD display, which flips out from the back and swivels for previewing or reviewing shots. A display on the top of the camera lets you monitor camera statuses--battery life, number of shots remaining, flash settings; the same reports can be checked through the high-resolution viewfinder.

In automatic mode the camera determines the best shutter speed, flash, white balance, color, and aperture settings. There are also more than a dozen preset "scene modes" for getting the best results when shooting in difficult lighting conditions, such as at night or indoors, on the beach or in the snow, at dawn or sunset, at sporting events or fireworks shows. One intriguing new mode I didn't test was "museum," as the museum I visited recently had a NO CAMERAS ALLOWED sign. (Maybe museum mode makes the camera invisible.) However, I did test the Nikon's in-lens vibration-reduction system by downing several cups of strong coffee in the museum cafeteria and then trying to snap photos one-handed through the window of a moving car, and the results were just as bad as I expected them to be. But under less jittery conditions the VR did in fact seem to eliminate blurry shots.

The drawback to high-megapixel cameras is image storage. The Coolpix 8800 VR uses Type 1 or Type 2 Compact Flash cards, but as with most higher-end cameras, Nikon does not include one in the box. You'll need a high-speed, high-capacity CF card or an IBM Microdrive; I tested the camera with a 256-megabyte SanDisk Ultra II card, which costs about $40, but realized that a 512-megabyte card for $70 would be a better choice. CF cards as large as eight gigabytes are available, although they cost nearly as much as the camera itself and aren't officially supported.

Even though it's classified as a compact camera, the Nikon is a definite handful, weighing a pound and a half and measuring five inches wide and five inches from viewfinder to lens cap. It's not a camera that you can carry around in a pocket, but it's smaller than the Nikon D70. My other quibble was its three-second lag time between power-on and first photo. Three seconds is not an eternity except when compared with swifter cameras like, say, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P15.

The 7.2-megapixel Sony P15 is a sharp, clever, and undemanding travel companion. It's half the price of the Nikon, at $500, but gives up less than a megapixel in resolution and is only about one-fifth the size. Housed in a rugged metal body--it comes in a choice of three colors: silver, black, and blue--it's a little more than four inches long, two inches tall, and an inch thick, small enough to snuggle in the front pocket of your jeans. The Carl Zeiss lens zooms out to 3X and retracts back into the body when power is off; the lens is automatically protected by a shutter leaf just in case you have lint, loose change, or car keys in your pocket.

Despite its subcompact size the P15 offers outsized performance. Image quality is remarkably good, even in low-light situations, with excellent color and sharpness. Power-on to first shot is about one second. The optical 3X zoom limits the creativity of many travel shots, but it's about as good as it gets for little cameras. (The P15's even-smaller sibling, the 5.1-megapixel Sony DSC-T1, also offers 3X zoom.) Unlike the Nikon, the Sony sacrifices some manual controls, but the automatic modes are quite good. It can also capture short MPEG movies. Sony includes a 32-megabyte Memory Stick card, and upgrading to a 512-megabyte Memory Stick Pro card (about $85) is highly recommended.

The P15 is definitely among the cameras I'd vote for on my next vacation. But in four years, I suppose, we'll all be toting 12-megapixel zoom-lens camera phones.

FEEDBACK technology@fortunemail.com