My advice on a digital camera.
First is shutter lag. Get a camera with the least amount of shutter lag (basically the speed of focusing) time you can find, or afford. The faster (less time it takes) the shutter lag the faster it will focus from one subject to another.
Second is Optical zoom. The higher optical zoom the farther away you can be from your subject. Personally I would try to find one at least 10x or higher for good distance photos. Digital zoom is a fake way of zooming so that figure is bogus.
Third is screen size. Obviously you want it easy to see so find one that is of good size.
Fourth is the megapixal. It basically boils down to how big you want to be able to blow up your pics when you print them out. Go no lower than 5 megapixals, and you shouldn't have any problems blowing up your pics to an 8x10 photo.
The ultimate dictator in how good of pictures a camera will take is the size of the sensor. unfortunately it's very hard to tell what the size of the sensor really is. In a SLR camera it is usually measured in millimeters. On a regular camera it is usually in fractions of an inch.
Here is a few nice links to some info on how to choose a good digital camera.
http://science.discovery.com/fansites/geek/episode/notes/digital-cameras.html
http://www.digitalcamera-hq.com/digital-cameras/digital-cameras-the-top-10-things-you-need-to-know_roundup.html
