High Optical Zoom Options (Prosumer?)

I'm hoping you guys can help find a good camera for me. I was originally thinking the Canon S5 IS but it doesn't seem to be well liked. The Sony DSC-H9B also has my attention but I'd prefer SD memory cards. Price range $500 or less if possible.

I'm a pretty basic and novice camera user, but would like some features such as manual shutter speed adjustment, self timer and lots of optical zoom capability but other than that I don't know what I need. At least 10x zoom, but the higher the better.

Any thoughts? I don't need to make the purchase right away, thinking sometime around Christmas.

I'd recommend a Canon S2 or S3. Great image quality and can be had rather cheaply.

I've got a S1 that works great and it's only 3.2mp.

Any reason why you need a high-powered optical zoom?

I just enjoy being able to zoom long distances. Animal shots are some of my favourites and it can be hard to get close to them in many cases.

Thanks for the suggestions tienm23. I quickly looked on ebay and found they were usually $250-300 range.

Any other suggestions for camera models to look at or good places to buy them?

Why not just go with a SLR? Prosumers are practically one step below an SLR as is... you like animal shots? Slap on a 70-200mm, or 100-400mm and you're set.

I appreciate your suggestion but what kind of price range would I be looking at? I'd prefer to stay under $500 if possible.

Originally Posted by CSAgent

Why not just go with a SLR? Prosumers are practically one step below an SLR as is... you like animal shots? Slap on a 70-200mm, or 100-400mm and you're set.

a decent zoom lens of 10x isn't cheap on a dslr, thats what I've found out but love my d50 anyway but miss my olympus with 10x zoom because it was smaller and easier to carry around