These days, the power needs of digital cameras are astonishingly low, especially if you utilise all the power save features available on most cameras.

My Sony DSC-P71 (bought for use as a cheap camera to take to parties and pubs) will fill a 128Mb card, using flash with the LCD screen on twice over before the batteries die. And carrying a spare set of rechargeable AA's is easy.

The quality is very good (3.2 megapixels is excellent for most uses) but I guess if you really do want it to be as close to film quality as possible then you will need to go for one of the 14 megapixel cameras.

In general though, I would recommend a cheaper camera, but with a decent lens - a 35mm capable will do more for the average user than higher resolution.