I Just purchased a Canon A20, to capture the building of a new inground pool. It was around $350.00. I am exptremely happy with it, and would recommend it highly. As long as you don't use the LCD screen to compose pictures, and don't use the largest image resolution, you get pretty good battery life too. I have not upgraded the memory card and only have 8MB. But as I said with a smaller resolution it is good for 20 + pics.
When I was researching cameras I used this website
http://www.dpreview.com/
it was very helpful and has professional review as well as owner reviews, sample pics etc.
Good luck