It’s always a good idea to have a camera along. They serve many purposes, from documenting accidents and incidents, insurance documenation, recording activities, tracking disassembly and reassembly of things like cars, guns or even tents, research photos of things to study later, and even recreational shots.
While modern phones can take images, the quality is certainly lacking due to iris size, and I prefer to leave the phone to its task of communicating.
The Canon PowerShot A580 
It’s rated for 8 megapixel, but mathematical resolution is not the only criteria. Lenses and processors also matter. The images from this camera are exceptionally clear and bright, with good, undistorted depth of field for most shots, and a great LCD screen. This last is especially useful for framing shots at an extreme angle where the viewfinder isn’t usable.
It zooms to 4X optical, 16X total and still maintains excellent resolution. Its settings include a timed shutter, various settings for daylight, nighttime, portrait. It shoots quite excellent video, with decent sound quality. The autofocus works well, generally picking the subject with ease. If shooting hard to see objects, such as a spider in a web, illumination with a flashlight will cause the system to recognize the lit subject. The viewfinder window shows a somewhat larger image than the LCD screen or image file, so be sure to center the subject well if using it.
It has sufficient resolution to even photograph text pages clearly, if the text is not too fine for screen resolution on enlargement. Colors generally are very clear and focus crisp.
The size is compact enough to fit in a pocket, but large enough to make handling it easy. It runs off two standard AA batteries, so is easy to keep charged. It downloads with a standard A to B USB cable. I’m not sure of the total capacity, but I’ve stored hundreds of images and several 30 second video clips without exhausting the 32 meg card. You can also carry spare cards.
Settings allow you to shut off flash, chimes, shutter noise and other features to save power or for light discipline, though the illuminating range finder could still be a problem.
There is a momentary lag on the shutter when the flash is engaged, which can be aggravating, and it’s a good idea to carry extra batteries. You can reduce power consumption by turning the screen off, but it still uses power within a few hundred shots at most. It’s definitely not an armored case. It will survive some bumps and dings, but a serious drop will probably break it. In direct sunlight, colors can be a bit washed out—Olive Drab and Flat Dark Earth will look somewhat similar in hue due to similarity of reflectivity and saturation.
We have better cameras here for dedicated professional use, but this is the one that’s in my backpack or jacket whenever I leave the house, and what I use for most of the photos for these reviews and my online sales. It was well worth the investment for the two years and thousands of images I’ve captured with it, and it’s still functioning flawlessly.