What's a good, FAST point and shoot camera?

I love my Samsung CL80.

I’ve heard of people loving their Canon point and shoots.

I have a Panasonic Lumix. Mine is an older DMC-ZS10. It’s a little bulky in my jeans pocket, but fits easily in a jacket pocket or purse; they have smaller ones. It has “Scenes” options that are presets for different types of photos, such as an active child, nighttime photos, bright outdoors pics, etc. This is useful to me because I don’t know enough to set the aperture and shutter speed manually – but you can do that, also – it’s very customizable. It also has a touch screen so you can tell it what the focal point should be, and it will track it – very useful for moving targets. There is also a burst option that takes photos in rapid succession – which I’ve also found helpful with movement. It takes Hi-Def video, also.

PC Magazine listed cameras with the least “shutter lag”, the amount of time between pressing the button and registering the shot. Among their compact point-and-shoots, they really liked the Nikon COOLPIX AW100, which has a shutter lag of only 0.1 seconds. It’s also specifically designed as a rugged camera. It’s waterproof and engineered to survive drops. Also well within your budget at $256.70.

@Pachyderm_in_the_Room – That camera looks interesting, but I don’t see anything about the zoom. The speed looks good. I don’t see a lot of reviews on it and haven’t heard about it though.

@janbb The camera I had that broke was a Canon point and shoot and I liked it except for the slow speed. The newer ones have much better speed. There was a Canon on my short list that was top reviews on almost every site and it would have been my choice—except that one of the features was that the flash popped out of the top of the camera instead of being imbedded in the front, and to me that just screamed BREAKABLE.

@hearkat This camera came up FREQUENTLY in my searches and was one of the ones that confused me. I would swear that half of the reviewers were reviewing different cameras from the other half. Look on Amazon alone. Tons of people saying “near SLR” quality and almost equal amount saying all their pictures came out blurry. Lots of people saying the camera was rugged and an equal amount of folk saying it was too fragile. This camera was one of the reasons I felt more confused after reading reviews than before.

@thorninmud – That looks incredibly rugged and fast. I’d probably want to see how the zoom features worked. I think I should have mentioned that I’d like a decent zoom because it’s hard to get a nice shot of a kid playing on playground equipment without some pretty good optical zoom. 5x zoom MAY be enough I don’t know—but I wonder how easy the zoom is to work. The reason my current camera isn’t working is because it’s not easy to zoom at all and it has a similar build to this one. However.. the other coolpix cameras have amazing optical zoom, but they look pretty breakable. Perhaps when you go rugged you have to forgo some zoom.

@keobooks Yeah, to get lots of optical zoom, the lens has to extend way out from the camera body. This model keeps the lens flush with the body so that if it’s dropped, the lens won’t catch the brunt of the impact. But you pay for that in zoom range. The zoom is operated by a conventional toggle switch.

Edit: I meant to say rocker switch.

I would agree with @thorninmud about the coolpix, but, I love my little olympus stylus.

@thorninmud has it nailed. What you need is fast focus.
Depending on the shot, most of the autofocus cameras can be put into a manual mode where it does not have to focus at all (already done before the shot), so there is no lag. But you have to know ahead of time where your subject is going to be.

Nikon point and shoots are phenominal…I have the Coolpix s6300…16MP…about $150 or so.

I think this one may be good for me.

Nikon COOLPIX S6500 16 MP Digital Camera with 12x Zoom and Built-In Wi-Fi

It’s not quite as sturdy as the one @thorninmud showed—I think that one could get run over by a tank—but it does specifically mention being quick and good in low lighting. I’d pick orange because then I’d be pretty sure no one would mistake my camera for theirs.

I still don’t have the money yet, so I may still change my mind.

At the moment, the best possible point and shoot camera is the Sony RX100 (going for 650$. The second version of the camera was announced last night for $750). I heard the autofocus is LIGHTNING. Check out some reviews of the RX100, and maybe get your hands on it. You won’t be disappointed!
Even though it seems like it’s out of your range, it might be a great investment.