I agree with both of the above, but I know that you can use the camera for vacation pictures, or having fun, while the scanner doesn't go far from the computer.

If you only want to make images of chips, tokens, scan old photos or new... get a scanner. The bargain basement variety will do good Strike scans. As you move up you get better resolution and with a backlight model you can scan slides and negatives.

Camera. You can probably find one on sale for around $99 that will take better images than you need for the web. Make sure it's AUTOFOCUS not one of the fixed focus or focus free, which is a catch phrase for "cheap junk" that doesn't take anything but snapshots.

It seems they have finally caught on and all have flash, self timer and close-up. But I wouldn't want to miss the point that you should have a built in flash if you want the camera to be useful. The self timer is handy so you can get in the picture, not necessary but nice. Last of all, look for the close-up capabilities.

Some don't take close-ups, but most do now. If you get one that says Macro on it, you are even better off, because that means it will do very good close-ups.

For the average person (like us?) something in the 2 megapixel range is more than enough. You can make decent 4 x 6 prints if you want and the resolution for Strikes will be far more than you need for sharp images.

Most of the images you see on the BB could be 100 DPI and they would look fine, because the average monitor doesn't do much better than that. A huge mega image looks the same on the web as a 1240 x 960. (which is just over 1.2 megapixel.) and the larger image, which offers nothing more for the people viewing it, will take up more space on the website, your storage, the viewers temp directory and take longer to upload or download.

Hope that helps? Get a camera with Macro focus if you can. If not get one that does close-ups. If you don't want a camera, get a scanner which will make nice token scans.

As VP pointed out, don't use the flash. And Norm is also right, a scanner is cheap. If you are trying to get the least expensive way to make Strike scans, a cheap scanner will do much better than a cheap camera.

The image below this message is done on an old HP scanner and is 409 x 208 pixels. Probably 90 DPI. Notice the file is small, loads fast and has good sharp qualities. This scanner was free, from a friend, because he updated to something better a few years ago. (can't beat free!)