Good, inexpensive camera with auto-focus or touchscreen focus?

[morius]

Hello everyone. So, lemme tell you some background story first.

I have a sony DSC T-900, which is ok in terms of quality pictures and video (720p though), but it has autofocus...

It's touchscreen, so I can "sort of" manually focus it. It's more like, I click somewhere and then the camera auto-focuses on the point I touched, or tries to, so sometimes the results are not what I want.

Anyway, right now the camera is about 125 usd. The screen broke, sort of, so the camera still works but I can't really see the things on the screen that well.

I wanna buy a new camera. I wish I could buy a professional camera with a great lens that I can manually focus (seriously, I hate auto-focus with a passion), but I can't really afford that at the moment. So, I wanna buy a camera that can take pictures and video and that is between 100 to 200 bucks.

I don't live in a big city, but the electronics store I went to has some sony, fujifilm cameras and some other brands I can't remember. I saw a FujiFilm FinePix S4000, the lens looked pretty good but it doesn't have manual focus and it's not touch screen, so I assume it just focuses wherever it wants (and it's also pretty big).

Now, please, I need some guidance... I'm not a professional photographer, but I was happy to be able to (somehow) have some control over where to focus... Do you guys have any suggestions on which camera I could buy? (the bigger the list, the greater the chance I'll find it in this city).

And also, how do people take good pictures with cameras without manual focus? What's the trick to making the camera auto-focus where you want it to?

[Preeb]

There are pointy and shoot cameras around capable of video that can be set to manual focus. Most cameras which offer that will default to autofocus with manual as an option. My older model Canon PowerShot A720IS does this, although the video is anything to write home about. It isn't touch screen - you do the manual focus with the 4-way button on the back of the camera.

Just look at feature sets for the various cameras to see which ones can be set for manual focus. The only one I found in a quick look was the Canon G12, but at $445, it's more than double your budget.

[ceremus]

I've had a couple of Canon P&S cameras that had the option of focusing manually, but whenever I tried it was a bit of a pain. I could never get a fine enough control to where I could focus quickly and accurately. Maybe there are other makes and models that do it better, but based on my experience I feel like it would be tough to rival the control and precision of a manual focus ring.

However, something that helps immensely when I'm working with a P&S camera is to set the camera's autofocus zone to the center of the screen. Most of them by default will grab autofocus on whatever object is closest, which could be anywhere in the field of view. But if I set it to the center of the screen I can dictate where I want the focus to land, at least more accurately than if the camera guesses for me.

[OsmosisStudios]

Do you want the option to move focus manually, or choose where the focus is set? From your post it sounds like you just want to choose what the camera focuses on, not necessarily do the focusing yourself.

[morius]

Thanks for your replies.

Yeah, manual focus cameras are a bit out of my "camera budget" at the moment cause I'm having some big expenses unfortunately.

So, Osmosis, answering your question... I would love to focus manually, but since that's out of my budget, I would be happy if at least I could choose where the focus is set (via touch screen or via buttons, whichever).

Any suggestions about some camera models I could look into?

[OsmosisStudios]

You should be able to set where you want the camera to AF on any camera: check your manual for a "spot" or "single area" focus mode.